“This way,” he pointed into an alley to the side. “Keep out of the road.”
They followed, Gong stumbling between them, Ruby bringing up the rear. The alley was tall and narrow, wall-mounted water barrels and drain spouts providing variable headroom.
“A moment,” Ruby said. She pulled off her scribe stole and began tying it around Gong to bind his wound.
“Where’s the rest of your team?” Catchpenny asked.
“Think it’s called the Captain’s Hindquarters,” Thud said. “Sign has a picture of a…”
“I know the place,” Catchpenny said.
Ruby was running into a length versus circumference issue and was now just working on stuffing her stole in between Gong’s breastplate and his chest, a location Thud wasn’t sure had seen the light of day or the bar of soap since the last time Gong had had his armor expanded. Gong growled and waved her away.
“I’ll just hold it,” he said. He pressed the wadded up stole against the opening in his armor, the quarrel still sticking out. “We need to keep moving.”
The elf led them on a winding route into the twisting maze of alleys, ducking through near invisible archways, left then right, along low tunnels, between clotheslines and through small gated courtyards. Thud wasn’t sure how much farther Gong was going to make it. His breathing was shallow and fast. In the darkness and the rain it was impossible to tell what was water and what was blood.
The alley intersected a wider walkway and they were looking at the front of The Captain’s Hindquarters. It was modeled after the classic architectural style known as ‘the box’. The pair of oilcloth windows on either side of the door glowed golden from the lamps within and they could hear voices and laughter. Five windows on the second floor, the first and third showing light. There was no one visible.
“D'ye think it’s safe?” Thud asked.
The elf shrugged. “Safer than here, I’d wager. But that depends on who’s after you and why.”
“I was hoping you’d know, what with your cultist connections.”
“You think it’s related?”
“Sometimes we get attempts on us after a job when people think we’re carrying somethin' o' value. But we dropped off everything o' that sort a couple weeks ago and we ain’t with the wagons in any case. So yes, I think it’s related.”
“In this town, if someone’s after you it’s the pirate lord,” the elf said. “And if that’s the case then potentially everyone in town is going to be looking for you, depending on how far the word has spread. They’re all either on his crew or wish they were.”
“We need to get Gong inside so Doc can see ‘im. Then we can worry about who’s got it in for us. I don’t see no one out there.”
“They may have someone watching it. Both outside and inside if they’re smart.”
“Look there!” Keezix said, pointing. “Corner window, upper floor. The oilcloth is folded down in that top corner. If there’s someone watching the front then that’s my guess at where they are.”
“Well, the common room is full o' dwarves,” Thud said. “That’s got to be some sorta deterrent.”
“That won’t stop an arrow from the window as we cross the street,” Gong said. His voice was a wheeze. “Need to get the team up and on our side. Fire one o' them arrows through the downstairs window. That oughta grab their attention. Aim high.”
“In case one of the dwarves is dancing on a table?” Catchpenny asked as his unslung his bow.
“No, so your elfy little arms can arc the arrow far enough to get it across the street.” Gong’s voice sounded a bit stronger.
The elf laughed and fired. Thud immediately lost sight of the arrow in the darkness but there was now a hole high in the oilcloth window to the right of the door. There was the sound of breaking glass inside and an immediate yelp. The golden glow of the light dimmed to a beige glimmer.
The voices and laughter were replaced with thumping and loud crashes. Thud could imagine them in there, moving with purpose and hand-signals, flipping tables. He saw shadows moving within as someone moved to flank the door. The oilcoths were pulled aside just enough for the crossbows.
After a few seconds of quiet the door to the inn swung open with a leisurely creak. No one stood in the doorway. Another second and a helmet appeared, bobbing on a stick.
“At least hang a beard on it, ya dafty,” Gong called. “Wouldn’t even fool a gob' with that.”
Dadger’s head poked out underneath the helmet, followed shortly by the rest of Dadger. He gave the lapels of his coat a crisp straightening then stepped out of the doorway, hands clasped behind his back. He looked ready to receive a foreign dignitary.
“Master Gong?” he called back. “Perhaps you wish to inquire after a recently misplaced arrow?”
“Secure the inn and cover us!”
Dadger’s eyes widened and he jumped backward through the doorway in a flutter of coattails as if expecting a hail of arrows. A few seconds of clanking and the rest of the vanguard team came jogging out the door. They hadn’t brought their shields to dinner but they did have their crossbows. They fanned out, bolts pointing out into the swirls of rain. Thud counted to five in his head to give enough time for the dwarves inside to find any watchers or assassins or to at least make enough noise to distract them.
“Move!” Thud barked.
Gong grunted as they started moving again, his arm laying across Thud’s shoulders with crushing weight. Just had to make it across the street. Thud wasn’t worried about Keezix holding up the other half of Gong. She was stronger than he was. He’d give her more than half to carry but Gong’s personage was fairly evenly distributed.
There was shouting from upstairs. He looked up at the upper windows. A pale face briefly visible, a crossbow being raised, then the streak of another of the elf’s arrows from just over his shoulder. The face in the window spun out of sight with a cry.
Catchpenny sprinted past, crossing the road and charging through the door of the inn, racing toward the stairs. They shouldered their way after him, through the door into the light and warmth of the common room. Every face in the room was one he knew. The team was large enough to take up all of the rooms in most inns and homogeneous enough that anyone strolling into the common room got the feeling they’d crashed a private party whereupon they usually turned and strolled right back out again, often with an apology and a tip of their hat.
“Got ‘im,” Keezix said from beneath Gong’s other arm. “Go!”
Thud grabbed the mace from Keezix’s belt and charged after the elf.
He took the stairs two at a time, a difficult feat to accomplish with dwarven legs. Durham stood at the end of the hall, holding a mace and looking confused. He was at the door to the room where the face had appeared. Thud ran to it, skidding to a stop just outside and cautiously peeking in. Nibbly and Gammi stood there, crossbows aimed at a bald man in gray homespun, doubled over on the bed. A second man lay on the floor, red staining the wood around him. The elf’s arrow had been fatal. There were a pair of shoddy crossbows on the floor by the window. Underneath the bed the man sat on was a saddlebag. Catchpenny stood just to the side, bow back on his shoulder and arms crossed.
“Thought it might be interesting to leave one able to talk,” Catchpenny said. Thud’s brain was reluctantly reassessing the elf’s usefulness.
“I ain’t talkin' to you,” the man growled. He had a scar on his face that pulled his lip up like a fishhook. His voice slurred as if his tongue were too thick in his mouth.
Thud ignored him, reached down and tugged the saddlebag into the open. It was heavy and clinked as it moved. He unwound the string tie, lifted the flap and whistled.
“Lot o' coin in here,” he said. “Lots more coin than the likes o' you tends to come by.”
“That ain’t yours. Put it back.”
“You ain’t really in a position to be makin' demands like that.” He poked around in the bag. “I’m guessing must be about five hunnert talons in here.�
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“You get your grubs offa that runtstump!”
Thud’s knuckles made a little cracking noise as he balled his hand into a fist.
“I’ll give you five hundred talons to tell us what we want to know,” Catchpenny said.
The man’s mouth closed and his eyes narrowed.
“Or you could tell us you’re not talking. I’ll stick an arrow in you somewhere, you’ll yell. The dwarf here will make some part of you make crunching noises and you’re not going to like that either. More arrows, more crunching, lots of screaming. Eventually you’ll tell us what we want. Then we’ll take your bag there and leave. With any luck you’ll be able to crawl to the common room for aid before you pass out. I anticipate a dramatic entrance of you flopping down the stairs with your arms and legs bending in too many directions.”
The man licked his lips.
“Or,” Catchpenny went on, “you can tell us what we want and take those coins and run out of here on your intact two feet. By my count you don’t even have anyone to split that bag with. It’d be all for you.”
The man was silent but looked increasingly thoughtful.
“Five,” Catchpenny said. “Four…three…” He unslung the bow from his shoulder.
“All right already!” the man shouted. “What do ya want?”
“Pretty simple. Who gave you the money and what did you agree to do for it?”
“We were contracted. Raggins handled it all.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday mornin.”"
“And what were you hired to do?”
“We was s'posed to follow the ship captain. See who he met with.”
“And?”
The man shrugged. “He met with you.”
“How did you report back?” Thud asked.
“Raggins gave us some firecrackers to set off. He sent some of us off to lay waiting for you. Sent me ‘n’ Bill here in case the others missed ya.”
“Who is this Raggins?” Thud asked.
“One of the Black Knife crew.”
“Where were you supposed to meet him after?” Catchpenny asked.
“He said he’d find us. Said there was a bounty and that there’d be more money.” A yellow grin crossed his face. “Whole town’s gonna be looking to collect on that.”
“Anything else you want to ask?” the elf asked, giving Thud a sidelong glance.
Thud shrugged. “Naw. You’re seriously gonna let ‘im go?”
“I’m an elf of my word.” Catchpenny said. He gestured at the open window. “You’re free to go,”
“The window?” the man asked, a whine creeping into his tone.
“Or you could go down through the common room where our injured friend is. Dozen or so dwarves down there that would just love to meet you.”
“You said you’d give me the money.”
“Oh, of course,” Catchpenny said. He upended the saddlebag and the silver cascaded out in a torrent that sounded like metal rain.
“What the…?”
“Sorry, need the bag.”
The man glared at him.
“Starting to have second thoughts about this,” Thud said. “Thinking we should just cave his pate and be done with ‘im.”
The man began scrabbling at the coins on the floor, trying to scoop them into one large pile. He pulled his shirt off revealing fish-belly skin lined with curved scars. He started piling coins onto the shirt, finally binding it up and using it as a bag. It sagged with the weight. He spared one last glare for them then climbed through the window, scraping his knee on the sill in the process.
Seconds later there was a loud sound from outside. Thud wasn’t sure, but if he were to try and imagine what swearing loudly as several hundred coins ripped through a shirt, bounced off of roof tiles and fell like rain to the pier below were to sound like it would be pretty close to the sound they were hearing now. Catchpenny closed the window.
“We’ll have to mention Bill there to the innkeep,” he said, nudging the corpse with his toe.
“They’ll just drop him down the jakes at the end of the hall.”
Catchpenny shrugged, “Better them than me. What do you make of his story?”
“Seems there’s a lot of interest in whatever that cargo was and everybody seems to know more about it than I do.”
“Are you reconsidering the job?”
“No,” Thud said. “Artifacts tend to garner a lot o' interest and this won’t be the first time we was in a race to get to one first. Mostly concerned about that attack. What if it weren’t the only one?”
“All your dwarves are here though.”
“Yeah, but the ship ain’t. And Samona’s on the ship. Thinkin' they might go after him too. Mighta already done so.”
Catchpenny frowned. “Maybe. Our friend who just left via the window said they’d been following Samona. If they were going to attack him why not just do it straightaway?”
“They want Samona alive, I’m guessin'. Question is why?”
“He knows where Blackfog Island is. Assuming that they’re trying to get there too…”
“That fits, mebbe. They knew what cargo Samona’s other ship was carryin' and went after it. They lost their ship with the other one at Blackfog. Samona comes back and he’s the only one that knows where…”
“Right,” Catchpenny said. He was pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, kicking at a few of the scattered silver pieces as he walked. “They assume Samona might try to go back and recover the cargo. So they follow him. He meets with you and they realize he’s enlisting aid.”
“Why attack though?” Thud asked. “If they means to follow him, a successful attack on us just delays him leavin'.”
“They don’t need to follow him. All they need is Samona.”
“So why not grab ‘im earlier, before he even met us?”
The elf shrugged. “They might be scrambling. Maybe they were thinking their ship was still going to come back, didn’t know it had been lost until word spread from Samona’s crew. Half-assed plans thrown together in a hurry. Conflicting orders to the lackeys before they could get their plan coordinated. Trying to play multiple options, maybe. Could be any number of things.”
“Still sifts down to Samona bein' the prize. He’s got the treasure map in his head. If they went after him too we may already be too late. We need to get over there.” Thud started for the door.
“Wait,” Catchpenny said. “The captain of the Black Knife runs this town. If it’s him that’s after you it’s probably safe to assume that there’s a lot more sailors out there looking to become your newest problem. Operate on the assumption that the entire town is now hostile to you.”
“Squad o' armed dwarves is a mighty tough rock to crack.”
“You’d still be heavily outnumbered and on their turf. If I were them I’d have archers tucked away the entire distance between here and the docks, just waiting to pick you off from the shadows.”
Thud nodded reluctantly. “That ain’t so good a scenario.”
“There is another way. Not necessarily a pleasant one.”
“Less pleasant than being stuck full o' arrows?”
“The Shallows. Underneath the town. Dark, tight quarters, plenty of cover and route options. They might have people down there but any fighting would be up close.”
“What’s so unpleasant about it?”
“It’s also the sewer and midden for the entire town. Tide keeps it from getting too bad but…” the elf shrugged and let the sentence trail off.
Thud snorted and grinned. “Dark, dangerous, constricted and smelly. Sounds like a dungeon to me. Git yerself ready, I’m gonna round up some dwarves.”
Chapter Four
“What? None of them?”
Laughing Larry wasn’t laughing. He was known for not laughing, leading to his crew’s clever idea to call him ‘Laughing Larry’. The height of wit was low fruit in a pirate crew.
“Thinks we wounded one Cap'n.” Raggin
s? Was that his name? He stood scrawny and barefoot on the Karshian carpet, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot. He had more warts than face. He seemed to be desperately trying to avoid looking at the figure in the black robe that stood in the corner behind Larry’s chair.
Larry leaned back and folded his arms. The parrot on his shoulder squawked and gave a sharp jab at his ear with its beak. He’d acquired the parrot because it was the sort of thing that pirate kings were supposed to have but damned if he could figure out why. The cursed thing sat on his shoulder, shat on his coat, poked holes in him with its beak and, whenever it felt the situation warranted it, emitted a blood-curdling screech directly into his ear. He handed it a bit of biscuit in the hopes of shutting it up and returned his attention to Raggins.
“Wounded one?” he asked.
“Aye, sir. We found blood on some o' the noodles. We lost five men, though. Four in the fighting and one done fell off a roof.”
“And the money?” Larry didn’t care in the slightest about the personnel losses. There were always more pirates.
“Peach had it when he fell off the roof. Spilled it all over in front o' the inn there and caused a bit of a stir, everyone going after it.”
“I see.” He steepled his hands in front of his face. “And where were you during all of this?” He watched as Raggins' throat-egg went up and down like an elven yo-yo.
“I was, uh, coordinatin' the efforts from…”
“Ah, you were in the leadership position for this venture?”
“Aye.”
“This venture wherein I paid five-hundred talons to wound a single man?”
“Was a dwarf, sir.”
“I’ll be sure to take that into account when deciding if that was coin well spent. What do you think?”
“Me, sir?” Raggins' eyebrow arched up. He only had the one. It made it look like his forehead had a mustache.
“No one else here, is there?”
Raggins darted a nervous glance toward the hooded figure in the black robe that stood silently in the corner.
The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island Page 5