Forgotten Realms - [Double Diamond Triangle Saga 03] - The Mercenaries

by Ed Greenwood (epub)

  “And just what will you be doing?” Kurthe grunted.

  Belmer gave him a cold look and turned away without a word. Kurthe stared after him for a moment, his eyes twin flames, and then shrugged and went below. The hose nozzle soared up through the hatch and crashed onto the deck next to Sharessa a breath or two later. She trapped it with her foot out of habit, her attention on Belmer.

  Their fat employer was scurrying around among the deck boats, doing something with ropes. Coils of hose slapped against Sharessa’s boots, and she caught up several loops and started to trudge along the deck, heading for the flames. Sharkers were trotting past, lurching under the weight of their sand buckets. Sharessa barely saw them.

  Belmer was lashing several of the deck boats together. Then he unchocked their rail-ramps, tested the pry bars that would propel them along those ramps and over the side, and nodded as if satisfied. He loped along the decks to where the flames were fiercest and came back gingerly juggling flaming debris, shouting at Ingrar to keep clear when the youth helpfully offered his full sand bucket.

  The hose in Sharessa’s hands jerked, grew heavy and cold, and then trembled in earnest as cold black bilgewater spewed from it. She hastened to a good location on the smoking deck and tried to sluice the burning oil out of the chutes Belmer had opened—gods, but the little man had been busy—as the burning wreckage tumbled down into the bottom of one of the boats.

  He was burning their only escape…

  Sharessa went closer with the hose. Could she strike him with the stream of water and stop his destruction? She looked back along the moonlit deck. No, the hose was not long enough, no matter how she aimed it.

  Belmer came back with another blazing load, dumped it into another boat, and rushed away again. There were four boats, but she could see ropes joining only three of them. Sharessa looked up and down the decks at her comrades bending to take the buckets Belgin was handing up to them. Should she say something? Rush to stop him?

  What was it he’d said, along with ‘trust’? Something about things not being as they seemed?

  And then she let out her breath and relaxed; it was too late to do anything. He’d dumped something smouldering into the third boat—and bright fire leaped up!

  Sharessa heard startled shouts from Ingrar and Brindra. They broke into a run, but someone—Rings—darted in from the side and ran under Brindra’s legs, and she stumbled, crashed forward onto her face, and skidded along the deck. Rings popped up from the deck to grab Ingrar’s wrist and spin him around—and that was all the time their employer needed.

  Belmer was fumbling with his shirt, unbuckling something… Some sort of hidden pouch, low on his belly? Sharessa peered, and saw something gleam in the fat man’s fingers: a glass vial.

  The fat man bent over the three boats in turn, sprinkling something from the vial, looking for all the world like an old crone adding poison to her cooking pots. Whatever that powder was, it made the flames roar.

  Belmer tossed the empty vial into one boat and ran for the nearest pry bar. Rings was already moving to another, though it was clear he’d have to leap high into the air even to grab hold of it.

  Sharessa had a sudden vision of the dwarf kicking his legs vainly in midair, like a small child dangling from a swing, and burst into hysterical giggles even as she dropped the streaming hose to the deck and ran for the third pry bar herself.

  They sweated and gasped and strained together, and then Anvil came out of nowhere to take the third pry bar and heave—and suddenly the boats were moving, slipping away down the greased ramps with perilous speed, rushing and—

  Were gone into the sea with a tremendous splash. They ran to the rail and looked down. Belmer spread his hands to shove Rings and Sharessa away from him. There was another vial in his hand. He unstoppered it and then threw it, underhand and carefully—straight down into the middle boat.

  The night erupted into towering sheets of flame, so hot and so sudden in their roaring birth from the pitching boats that everyone at the rail stumbled back, cursing and clapping their hands over their eyes—except Belmer, whose hand was already shielding his.

  Night seemed to become day as the flames went white and spat sparks, and through the blinding brightness Sharessa saw Belmer running along the decks again. She trotted unsteadily after him, shaking her head to banish brilliant afterimages of searing flame.

  The fat little man moved like lithe lightning now, wearing an air of command like a mantle. He was bound for the mainmast.

  “Jander Turbalt,” he snapped, as he slowed in front of the white-faced, sweating man who was bound there, “I want you to up sail, rouse your men, and find guts enough to stay aboard! You’re safer obeying and keeping close than leaping into the endless sea, witless dog! We’ll be your crew—but I want us out of here, straight out to sea, as fast and as quiet as you can take us? Understood?”

  The terrified shipmaster gulped and stammered and nodded his head. Belmer whipped out his sword, and the captain’s noises of assent rose into a terrified wail. The small man slashed once, his steel winking in the moonlight.

  The captain’s bonds fell free, and Turbalt followed them to the deck, pleading and groveling on his knees. Belmer hauled him to his feet and said something soft, level, and menacing. The shipmaster scuttled away down his still-smouldering decks like a shore crab fleeing the claw of a hungry bear. Anvil and a grim-looking Brindra were waiting for him.

  Sharessa smirked as she watched him dwindle and then disappear into the tangle of ropes and bound sails in the forethroat. Then Belmer looked at her and at the abandoned hose, and she remembered what it was she was supposed to be doing. She ran back to where the bilgewater still flowed. It was coming slowly now; Kurthe must be very tired.

  As the ship turned again toward her former course and started to pick up speed, leaving the still-impressive columns of flame behind, Belmer slowly strode the decks in search of places that were still alight. Idly he kicked a bone across the deck and out a sluice-chute.

  Sharessa raised her brows. Impressive aim, too. Rings was stalking over to their employer now, and Sharessa drifted closer to hear what was said.

  The dwarf stopped and planted his hands on his hips. Sharessa knew that gesture of old; it was what Rings did when he was talking to the captain.

  A night after Blackfingers had met his final fire and water, the Sharkers had a captain again.

  As the Morning Bird slipped away into the night, Rings squinted up at the man whose eyes were looking knowingly back down at him.

  “I understand what ye’re about,” Rings began, “fooling them on the black ship, them as tried to ram us, into thinking we’re ablaze from stem to stern, and going down. But what if they see us, now, and aren’t fooled?”

  Belmer looked back at the flames behind them for a moment, and turned to face the dwarf again. “Then,” he said softly, and Sharessa saw the white flash of his teeth as he smiled mirthlessly in the darkness, “you’ll all have to start earning your jargoons.”

  Chapter 5

  The Ghost Ship

  “I’ve sailed ships before,” Anvil growled to Brindra, as they stood shoulder to shoulder hauling in a mainsail line, “but by the looks of ’em, that’s more than these Tharkar rats’ve ever done.”

  His barrel-shaped comrade spat over the rail, nodded grimly, and replied, “Our new master would’ve done better to leave them all behind on the docks, to be sure. I never heard of crew who had to be clubbed senseless to keep them from leaping to their deaths in the sea!”

  “If I’d known we were going to be fighting fires and dancing bones half the night, I’d’ve put away a few less tankards back at the Masques,” Brindra said. “When d’y’suppose Belmer will think we’ve run far enough and let us all find a bunk? Or does he think his jargoons buy folks’ sleep, too?” She yawned for perhaps the hundredth time.

  Anvil groaned. “Don’t do that, woman! I’m afraid I’ll be wakened by my head bouncing off the deck after I fall asleep an
d then fall over!”

  Brindra chuckled hoarsely. “That’s better than not waking when you crack your head open on the deck, if you take my meaning.”

  “Ho ho,” Anvil agreed with weary sarcasm. “Are we going to work the sails all night? I hear Kara-Tur’s not all that far off…”

  “Was that someone yawning I heard?” a dry voice asked, out of the darkness down the rail.

  Anvil turned. “Belgin? What news?”

  “Supper,” was the wry reply, as Belgin and Rings staggered into view, a dented carry-cauldron between them. Its edges bristled with ladles, hook-jacks, and pans. “Some sort of soup our mysterious and all-talented master cooked up.”

  “He cooks, too? Gods above,” Brindra muttered.

  “So that’s where he went,” Anvil said, accepting a pan of steaming liquid. It looked thick and green in the moonlight, and when he stirred the spoon that came in it, pale lumps surfaced momentarily. He peered at them rather suspiciously as a hungry-looking Ingrar joined them. “Any idea what went into this?”

  “Dead things,” the dwarf said laconically. “ ’Shrooms, sea turtles by the score, a crab he netted, and herbs— lots of herbs.”

  “Not like that powder he threw on the boats, I hope,” Sharessa said with a yawn, joining them. “If I didn’t think he wasn’t quite crazed, I’d guess he intended to keep us hauling on sails and trying to outrace black ships all night!”

  “No,” Rings joked, twisting his voice into strangled mimicry of the gaunt sailor back in the Masques, “it’s ghost ships ye has to watch out for, lassie! Late at night, when folk on the moon watch are a-yawn, they rise out of the deeps, trailing bones and seaweed, and creep up on the leeboards of unsuspecting ships, seeki—”

  “Oh belt up, nimble tongue of the Olnblades,” Sharessa said affectionately, patting the dwarf’s tanned bald head. She knew he hated that.

  Rings gave her a glare. “You sound to me like a lass too sleepy to have any o’ this fine soup, hey?”

  “Give,” Sharessa told him grimly, “or you’ll be wearing that ladle in a shorter time than you’d think—the handle in your gullet and the bowl out your backside.”

  Grinning, Rings passed over a steaming skillet. As Anvil had before her, Sharessa stirred and looked at it curiously.

  “’Sgood,” Anvil assured her, licking the last errant drops from his thumbs. “First time I’ve ever really liked sea turtle.”

  Sharessa raised her own hot spoon, sniffed, and sipped. It was good, with a strange taste, like lemons, under the stronger briny tastes of the seafood. She dug in.

  “Anyone hazard who gifted us with fire arrows and skeletons?” Brindra asked idly. “I’d like to know who we’re running from—so I can accidentally run into them in Tharkar-port some night, with my sword unfortunately drawn.”

  “The ghost of Blackfingers, furious that we’ve taken ship with someone else?” Rings teased.

  “That’s not funny,” Sharessa told him. “I liked Ralingor,” she added, almost in a whisper, after a moment—and then wondered why she’d admitted that aloud. She never wanted anyone to know about the nights she’d crept into his cabin, so late that even Destra and his other wenches were snoring.

  Angrily she banished those memories, and the tears she knew they’d bring. Gods, why was she thinking this way?

  “I never wanted to go to sea,” Belgin told them, his voice low. “I just ran out of cities that my neck was safe in.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Rings grunted, “what with the Five Kingdoms the way they are—all double-dealing merchants, and nasty feuds wherever idiots aren’t hurling armies!”

  “Or fleets,” Anvil grunted. “Which reminds me: unless Master Belmer knows some back way into wherever we’re to search for this lady of his, we’ll be turning south soon—into the very teeth of the Doegan Dogs.”

  The Doegan Dogs were pirates—freebooters sponsored and chartered by the self-styled Emperor of Doegan to hunt down the ships of Ulgarth, Parsanic, Konigheim, and anyone else who came within reach… while the Emperor’s Imperial Fleet kept busy in the south, fighting the pirates of the fabled Golden Lands (and, some said, other lands for Doegan to conquer). The Dogs made sailing dangerous anywhere south of the Free Cities, but then, they kept all the kingdoms from rising in enough strength to wipe out the folk of Tharkar and other “honest” pirates, too.

  “Kurthe swore some Dogs burned his ship,” Belgin told them.

  “What, in Port Halovar? Likely enough,” Anvil grunted. “What made you think of that?”

  Belgin frowned. “Your mention of the Dogs, of course,” he said slowly. “I didn’t mean to let it slip out, though.”

  Sharessa matched his frown. Why were they all spilling old secrets?

  “So why are the Five Kingdoms ‘the way they are,’ as you put it?” Ingrar asked Rings. “I’ve always wondered.”

  Anvil laughed cynically, but the dwarf held up a hand for silence, scratched his chin, and said solemnly, “It’s a secret.”

  “What?” Ingrar asked, eyes shining in eagerness. “Tell me!”

  “Ah, lad,” the dwarf said, a sudden answering twinkle in his eyes, “if I knew just why the gods make everyone who climbs on a throne crazy, I’d be Emperor of the Five Kingdoms, and not trading words on the deck of this hulk now, with ye!”

  “That was well said,” Belgin said grudgingly.

  “Well put, indeed,” Anvil agreed.

  “Hmm,” Rings pondered thoughtfully, emptying his pan, “I wonder if good Master Belmer has put a little something extra into this soup?”

  “Of course I have,” a calm voice spoke out of the rigging overhead, stunning them all into gaping silence. “Not to learn your secrets, but to keep you awake. Anyone still yawning?”

  The Sharkers looked at him, blinked, thought about it, and said in ragged unison, “No.”

  The dwarf squinted up at the dark bulk that shouldn’t have been able to get to where it was, so close above them, without at least one of them noticing, and asked flatly, “Why?”

  “That black ship is still hunting for us,” their employer told them. “I’ve seen it twice. That’s why I turned nor’west a little while back—but they’ve found us again. They seem to be able to feel about—but not quite—where we are out here.”

  “Magic?” Sharessa asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Belmer gave her a thoughtful look. “Only if someone aboard is working it,” he told her, in a voice that was soft and yet had edges as hard as ice.

  Belgin Dree was dipping a finger in the soup and sucking it appraisingly. “That lemon taste,” he said slowly. “Your ‘little something extra’ wouldn’t have been a purple powder, would it? From Chult?”

  Belmer inclined his head and did not quite smile.

  Sharessa stared up at him, fear stirring in her like a cold sea breeze. “You’ve poisoned us?”

  The fat man shook his head. “Kept you alive,” he replied. “I had the same soup you did. Yulchass powder, made from a berry found deep in the jungles of Chult, keeps folk awake and alert a day or so longer than usual—and they don’t go under from the stolen sleep, after.”

  Belgin nodded. “And the price is loose-tongued honesty.”

  Rings stared at him, and then turned his bald head slowly to give their employer a sour look. “That’s a trick I’d as soon ye didn’t play on us again, Master Belmer, if ye take my meaning,” the dwarf said slowly. “There’re certain things as’re not done on the Utter Coast… poisoning, for instance.”

  “Oh?” their employer asked, and turned his head to match gazes with the sharper. “Is that true, Belgin?”

  “Ahh…” The older man coughed, smiled a little weakly, and said, “What one doesn’t know, it’s been said, is often a comfort.”

  Rings directed an even darker look at his comrade. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t want to know… I really don’t want to know.”

  “What I do want to know,” Brindra said suddenly, startling them all with the bre
ak from her accustomed silence, “is who’s after us—and why. Any ideas, sir?”

  Her question was flung like a blade up at where Belmer hung in the shrouds above, but the little man only tightened his mouth and said, “I have my suspicions—but that’s all they are. Spreading rumors that turn out to be false can be worse, by far, than keeping silent.”

  Rings grinned. “So, care to share your suspicions with us? Or, since we’re wide awake again, a little more about this mission we’ve signed on for?”

  Belmer did smile this time. “Not yet,” was all he said. Before anyone could say anything further, a soup bowl spun down into the dwarf’s hands—Rings caught it without thinking, spoon and all—and the shape in the shrouds above turned and was gone, flitting from line to line like a restless shadow, making no more noise than the whispering waves on the other side of the rail.

  The Sharkers exchanged glances, and Rings broke the silence to ask them all softly, “So who d’you think our Master is, anyway?”

  “A renegade royal-blood from Doegan?” Brindra asked, eyes bright at this romantic thought.

  “An agent of Ulgarth, sent to stir things up in proud and increasingly dangerous Doegan?” Sharessa countered.

  “No,” Belgin and Anvil said together.

  “He’s from somewhere far from here,” Belgin added. “I can’t be sure where—he’s traveled some, and been in several courts or cities for some years at a time— but his accent says ‘north’ to me. Way north, beyond Raurin; mayhap a long way beyond.”

  “That means he can’t be a slaver out of Konigheim, raiding up and down the Coast,” Brindra put in. “They don’t hire outlanders for suchlike.”

  “Maybe he’s one of the agents the Emperor-Mages of Doegan use,” Ingrar ventured, “to keep folk from seeing their webs and gills and fish-skin.”

  Brindra made a rude sound. “You listen to too many tavern-tales, lad,” she said, and pulled down her ragged shirt to lay bare one muscled shoulder. A few scales shone there, and in the armpit beneath was a shadow that might have been a thin, spiny span of blue, webbed flesh. The youth gaped at her, blushing scarlet, as she stared challengingly at him and slowly drew her clothing together again. “You think someone high and mighty needs to hide a few gills?” she growled at him. “From whom?”