by Mel Odom
A cold depression settled over Jherek's shoulders.
"You liked her, didn't you lad?" Hagagne asked. "Even after that bit she done for you?"
"I don't even know her." Jherek watched the young woman with a heavy heart, knowing his words were more true than he'd thought earlier.
"You've a tender heart, Jherek. All you young brooding ones do." Hagagne pulled a pouch from his work apron and took out a pipe carved in the likeness of a sea horse. The sea horse's curled tail created the bowl. He filled it with pipeweed, lit up, and said, "Lucky for you it'll pass, and glad you'll be of it."
Once Yeill and her competitor were lashed in, the long fishing poles were attached to the chairs and locked in. As the hooks were baited, the gathered Amnians cheered again and passed around several bottles of the wine they'd been drinking since they boarded in Athkatla.
"Her father knows of the wager?" Jherek asked.
"Aye, and he was one of the first to encourage the competition. To hear him tell it, his daughter's luck is phenomenal." Hagagne grinned evilly. "Only we know about the one that got away, don't we, lad?"
Seeing no humor in the remark, Jherek refrained from responding.
Deckhands threw the baited hooks into the slight wake behind the cog. Yeill and her competitor worked the reels at once, letting more fishing line out. Another deckhand poured out a bucket of chum from the big barrel kept in the stern.
"What about the situation with the Amnians?" Jherek asked.
"You mean about the girl's da breathing down the cap'n's neck?"
"Aye."
"They reached an agreement."
Jherek felt even lower, wondering how much profit Finaren had lost because of him. Even volunteering to give up his wages for the trip wouldn't cover the loss, he was sure. "Do you know what it was?"
"Aye." Hagagne relit his pipe and smiled broadly. "The cap'n said he thought that Merchant Lelayn would hate to try to make a raft of his precious cargo and float it back to Athkatla from the Sea of Swords. The Amman merchant, why, he agreed that was truly so."
"Why did he do that?"
"I got this story only secondhand, you understand," Hagagne said, "so I might not have the right of it, but I do know what was basically said."
Jherek waited impatiently. Hagagne was one to draw on his stories.
"Cap'n told Merchant Lelayn that he had him a crewman willing to take lashes from the cat over what that little bit-that daughter of his had done," Hagagne said. "Cap'n told him that he couldn't do no less than stand by his crewman, and he'd be damned if anybody was going to skipper this ship other than him. Also told Merchant Lelayn that he couldn't do any less than pay for ship's passage ahead of time now, what with all the confusion his daughter had caused."
"The fee was paid?" Jherek asked in disbelief.
Hagagne nodded, puffing on his pipe contentedly. "In gold. Neghram seen it himself."
Before Jherek knew it, a smile lifted his lips. Maybe his luck was finally changing.
"Not many cap'ns would have done what the cap'n done," Hagagne stated. His head was wreathed in pipe-weed smoke. "I might not have believed it myself if I hadn't been on the ship that done it."
"Still," Jherek said, not able to fully shake the doubt that had lived within him all his life, "standing up for me might not have been the best thing to do. The Amnians will get word of what Captain Finaren has done and Butterfly will be on their black lists."
"Kind of thought the same thing, lad. Seems Merchant Lelayn mentioned that to the cap'n. Said he didn't care to do business with a man who didn't keep his mind on business. Then the cap'n, he told the Amnian that an honest man was worth his weight in gold to a man in business for himself, and the passage to and from Baldur's Gate aboard this ship didn't come close to that amount. Said him not standing up for you might mean losing you, and that was his bottom line."
Jherek knew that wasn't true. Getting a berth on a ship's crew had been hard, even in Velen. If it hadn't been for Madame litaar and his experience working in Shipwright Makim's yard, Captain Finaren wouldn't have given him a second glance. If not for Butterfly, he didn't know what ship he would have crewed aboard. There were too many experienced sailors in the Duchy of Cape Velen, and none of those bore his sins.
"In the end," Hagagne went on, "Merchant Lelayn agreed that the cap'n standing up for you was good business. Said when he got back to Athkatla, he'd put another cargo together and ship with Butterfly again."
"That is good news," Jherek said.
"Aye. With the cap'n and Butterfly, we'll do all right. Not many got the rep of either of those."
It was something to take pride in and Jherek did, even though the edicts of Ilmater preached against such feelings. He glanced back at the Amnians below. "I'll wish them good luck in their fishing."
"From up here," Hagagne suggested.
"Aye."
Hagagne gave him a side-long glance. "And hope that the lady wins so that she doesn't have to live up to her end of the wager?"
Jherek's face burned. Thoughts of the young woman sharing her bed silks with anyone didn't set easy with him even though she wasn't what he'd thought she was.
"Don't be so embarrassed, lad. Your heart's full of love at your age, and there's nothing wrong with it, but you could do with a little seasoning, if you'd allow yourself. I know some of the tavern wenches who wouldn't mind a tumble if you'd only ask."
Ignoring the comment, Jherek gazed up at the darkening clouds. The storm seemed more threatening than ever. The shadows had chased the green from the Sea of Swords, turning even the water dark. Off in the distance, pale flickering lightning knifed through the sky.
"You reading again?" Hagagne asked, picking up the book.
"Aye."
"Never found a knack for reading meself," the crewman said, "but I like being read to well enough. What's this book about?"
"A liege's man," Jherek said. "He joined the king's army to fight against the goblin hordes threatening the kingdom, only to find that he's falling in love with his liege's lady."
"Does she know?"
Jherek nodded. "The lady's marriage was an arranged one. She doesn't love her liege. She loves the warrior."
"Perhaps when you have time, you'd read this one to me." Hagagne picked up the thick volume. "I'd predict a short, unhappy ending, but I tell by the heft of this book that's not the case."
"No." Jherek loved the intricacies of the plot, loved the way the liege's man was at war with his own feelings and the rules he'd laid down for himself. He still didn't know how the story would end. "Aye, I’ll read it to you if you'd like."
Hagagne clapped him on the back. "Now there's a good lad. I shall look forward to it."
Jherek replaced the volume in his kit, brought to him earlier by a crewman the captain had sent up. His eye wandered back to the cog's wake to study the fishing lines. He and Hagagne watched in silence for a few moments, then watched Yeill's line suddenly draw taut.
A cheer rose from the throats of the Amnians, showing the effects of the wine they'd been drinking. It died away when the shark's dorsal fin broke the water.
The triangle of cartilaginous flesh looked impossibly large. The brute's gray mottled head broke water next, the fishing line trapped in its snarl of teeth.
The cheers turned to a panicked chorus of fear.
Jherek rose to his feet, yelling down from the crow's nest. "Cut the line! Cut the line!"
The line was stout, unbreakable. Butterfly had a large crew and she had to feed them. The Sea of Swords held big fish, and the captain wanted none of them to get away once they were hooked. The enchantment on the lines he'd paid for kept them from breaking, though they could be cut. Still, two men had been pulled from Butterfly's deck before.
Captain Finaren himself moved first, shoving his way through the ring of Amnian wealthy. He drew his cutlass and pulled it back to swing.
Timbers groaned and screeched as Yeill's fishing chair yanked free of the deck and tore through t
he railing. She was gone in an instant, pulled under by the big shark she'd hooked.
Jherek stood in the crow's nest and drew his seaman's knife from his leg sheath. The knife blade was a foot long, thick and heavy, with a saw-toothed back for cutting through bone. The small handle barely filled his fist.
"Sea devils!" someone shouted.
Glancing to his left, Jherek saw a sahuagin manta surface on Butterfly's port side. The oblong barge used by the sahuagin to travel above or below water was much smaller than most of its kind that the young sailor had heard described. Like all of its kind that he'd heard about, the manta had been cobbled together from ships wrecked at sea or scavenged from shorelines. The boards were stained green with undersea scud from being submerged for so long, but fitted neatly into a wedge shape that made it very maneuverable. It rode low in the water, but the finned shapes of the sahuagin could be seen hunkered down on the benches. They paddled furiously, moving in response to a measured cadence, totally focused on their prey.
Jherek had heard stories about mantas that crewed as many as six hundred sahuagin, but firsthand stories were few and far between. Most men who saw them perished in the sea devils' attack. From his initial estimate, he guessed that there were forty or fifty sahuagin aboard, easily twice the number of crew aboard Butterfly.
Captain Finaren bawled out orders at once, calling his crew into action.
Jherek looked at the water where Yeill had gone under. He couldn't see her.
"Lad," Hagagne called from the ship's rigging, already moving down to the deck himself. He stopped when he realized what Jherek was about to attempt. "Leave her. She's probably already in that shark's belly by now and not worth your life even if she isn't."
"I can't."
Hagagne reached back for the young sailor, but Jherek avoided the other man's grasp. Without another word, he dived from the crow's nest, plummeting toward the dark water.
II
9 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet
Jherek hit the ocean cleanly, holding his hands before him to break the surface tension and lessen the chance of injury from impact. Still, the force of hitting the water nearly drove the breath from his lungs. The cold bit into him with jagged, angry teeth. The sahuagin manta was ahead and on the port side of Finaren's Butterfly so he knew he wouldn't immediately be seen by the sea devils aboard their barge.
He also knew that the shark that had taken Yeill's hook hadn't bitten by chance. The sahuagin ran with the sharks. He didn't doubt the danger that more sharks would be around as he attempted to save the Amnian woman.
The darkened sky above the ocean cut down on the visibility beneath the water as well. Pale colored sand covered the rolling ocean floor, and brain coral stood up in bunches, like tumors. A coral reef that housed dozens of multicolored fish hiding from the sharks ran in an irregular line to his right. As always, being below the ocean line filled Jherek with a sense of ease. Everything moved more slowly here, and it seemed more open to him than even the sky. He could feel the water, feel the pressure of it against his body, feel the current that mixed warm and cold water in layers. He felt at home there.
Jherek swam hard, the knife still clenched in his fist. The pressure on his ears told him he'd gone down thirty feet or more. He searched the water and spotted Yeill still in the fishing chair less than fifty feet from his position, sinking slowly. He turned toward her and swam hard.
Two sharks glided in sinuous circles around her, close but not closing in. One of them still had the fishing line in its mouth. Beyond the sharks, three sahuagin clutching spears kept watch. They spotted him and did nothing but spread out, assuming he was fool enough to swim to his own death.
Jherek looked at them, matching all the stories he'd heard with the sight of the monsters before him. The sahuagin were huge in build, their bodies massive with muscle across the shoulders. Their legs with the extra joint looked grotesque. Broad faces with flaring fins sticking out into the water on either side of its head held dozens of narrow teeth, the black lips curled back to expose them in a threatening grimace. Their bite, Jherek had been told, could rip gobbets of flesh from a man, and the sea devils literally feasted on their victims, often before they died. Their tails whipped back and forth to help them maintain their position. The webbing between their long fingers and toes made their hands and feet look impossibly large.
Fear filled Jherek as he closed on the circling sharks, yet he was drawn to the act of attempting to save the young woman's life as surely as a compass needle was drawn north. He couldn't leave the young woman to her fate. Despite the water around him, his mouth was dry. He estimated that Yeill was less than twenty feet below the ocean's surface.
One of the sharks pulled away from the other and sped at Jherek, mouth gaping to reveal its teeth.
Without hesitation, Jherek dodged, kicking out hard and twisting in the water like a porpoise. All his life the water had been his element, and even though he moved well in a ship's rigging and on the ground, it was nothing like the way he moved in the water. He'd won every swimming meet he'd ever entered at Velen as a boy, and he'd dived deeper and better than anyone in the town, including seasoned sailors.
Madame litaar had suggested that it was because Jherek was linked to the sea, but even her powers of divination couldn't tell her how. Jherek only knew that there was no place he'd ever felt more at home. The years as a shipwright's apprentice on land watching ships he'd repaired and help build put out to sea had been hard, and he could never imagine living in a landlocked city.
Stroking furiously, he glided under the shark, missing it by inches. He decided not to use the knife. There was too much of a chance it would get stuck in the shark's body and he'd lose it. He didn't want the sharks in a blood frenzy.
His move caught the sahuagin by surprise as well. Evidently they'd felt confident of their shark's kill. Their finned heads turned to him as he swam to Yeill's side, their black eyes glinting with malicious light. The woman struggled with the seat restraints, trapped in the chair.
Jherek's blade freed her at once, slicing easily through the leather straps. He grabbed the Amman woman, pulling her from the chair and shoving her toward the surface.
An explosion of bubbles came from the mouth of one of the sahuagin. Immediately, both sharks turned their attention to Jherek.
His lungs burned as he watched the sharks and sea devils. He knew from his studies that the sahuagin controlled sharks and used them for war as well as security, though that control was a tenuous thing at times. He gripped the ceramic teardrop Madame litaar had given him when he set to sea.
Back in Velen, Madame litaar was known as a diviner and alchemist. She couldn't easily craft healing potions or some of the more exotic potions, but most things that related to the sea she could make without problem. She'd given him a shark repellent potion in the ceramic teardrop.
With the teardrop in his hand, he waited till the sharks were within ten feet, silent gliding death. He crushed the ceramic teardrop in his hand, releasing the strong potion inside. A yellow glowing cloud filled the water around him, swelling out to envelope the sharks even before they were on him. He reached out with his free hand, catching the lead shark's blunt snout. The rough, sandpaper hide pressed against his flesh, but he used the shark's momentum with his own to slide above it.
By the time the shark slid under him, the potion took effect. Both sharks jerked spasmodically, reacting to the potion's unique alchemy. Madame litaar had told Jherek the potion would create deep fear in the sharks, causing them to flee for their lives, and she was as good as her word. The sharks spun around and began to accelerate gracefully away. The sea devils tried to command them back into the cloud of repellent, but the sharks were more afraid of Madam litaar's concoction than their sahuagin masters. As a result, the sharks turned on their controllers, recognizing them instead of the now fading yellow cloud as the source of the threat that filled their simplistic nervous systems. The sahuagin broke ranks at once.
; One of the sharks succeeded in seizing a sahuagin in its jaws. A bloody cloud darkened the water, spreading outward. The second shark pursued one of the other sahuagin, leaving the third one free.
Lungs near to bursting from the time he'd been underwater and the effort he'd expended, Jherek stroked for the surface. He sensed the last sahuagin coming after him, cutting the distance in heartbeats, feeling the hate and excitement that it radiated, imagining he could almost read its thoughts.
He surfaced twenty feet from the young Amnian woman and drew in a deep lungful of breath. "Swim to the ship!" he ordered, gasping. "Now!"
He glanced ahead, seeing that Butterfly was coming about. Captain Finaren hadn't given up on them. Even though the cog turned hard about, filling the sails with the almost listless straight wind rather than the cross-breeze she'd been making do with all day, she kept her port side to the marauding sahuagin aboard the manta.
The young Amnian woman screamed and cried, and Jherek knew she was in real danger of causing herself to drown before she reached Butterfly.
He turned from her regretfully, aware now too that the sounds of combat came from the cog. He took a final breath, judging the sahuagin had to be almost on him, and dived beneath the water again. He blinked, trying desperately to clear his vision while the blood from the sahuagin and sharks clouded the water.
The third sahuagin swim-flipped and thrust its trident as Jherek sank into the water. It was less than fifteen feet out. Reacting quickly, knowing he had no chance to escape the wicked tines completely by attempting to dodge, he shoved his knife hand up. The blade connected with the trident, slipping unerringly between the tines and jarring against the base. The force of the blow vibrated Jherek's shoulder and elbow painfully. The scrape of metal on metal rang in his ears, though blunted by the water.
The sahuagin was on him, lashing out with talons from both hands and feet. Moving swiftly, faster than the wide-webbed foot that ripped up toward his midsection, Jherek grabbed the sahuagin's scaled ankle in his free hand while keeping the trident turned from him with the other. He used the foot's downward ripping action to shove himself down, gliding under the sea devil, then twisting to come up behind it. The unexpected move caught the sahuagin by surprise, but it moved to defend itself.