Crusade

by James Lowder

  “Why?” Azoun asked.

  Thom didn’t answer, but kept his gaze locked on the spot where he’d guessed his gift to Umberlee had hit the water. “Look,” he said in a voice that was barely heard over the storm. He pointed to the waves.

  When Azoun saw what Thom was pointing at, he gasped and gripped the railing tightly.

  Against the backdrop of the burning cog, a forty-foot-high, forked wave had risen out of the ocean. The wave curled in breakers both to the left and right and moved with unnatural slowness toward the Welleran. “Lady Umberlee herself. The goddess’s hand!” Azoun heard a sailor cry from nearby. “We’re doomed!”

  “Try and turn her about!” Farl Bloodaxe yelled from somewhere on the deck. “This’ll swamp us for sure.”

  But the wave continued to move toward the king’s carrack, slowly blotting out Azoun’s view of the burning cog. A burst of wind pushed cold rain into the king’s eyes, so he shielded his face for a moment. When he looked up again, the forked wave, its breakers never falling, was only fifty yards from the ship. It reared even higher for a moment, then collapsed, slapping the surface with a terrible roar.

  Everyone onboard the Welleran who saw the unnatural wave fall braced for the terrible aftershock. The collapse of the forty-foot-high wall of water should have sent huge waves out all around, but it didn’t. Instead, the storm died abruptly. The wind lessened, the sea calmed, and soon only a steady rain fell on the king’s carrack.

  As Azoun, Thom, and the crew looked out at the now-calm waters, they saw hundreds of blue-white points of light sinking below the surface. The light diminished as the glowing coins sank into the sea. Closer to the surface, dozens of sheets of parchment, tangled and torn, shone more brightly. Finally, a small box with Cormyr’s symbol prominent on its cover bobbed on the waves, casting a bright light.

  Thom Reaverson turned to King Azoun. “I’m sorry, milord. Of the things I have on the ship, I valued them most.”

  Azoun watched the pages and the box sink beneath the water, their light dimming as Umberlee drew the offerings to the bottom of the sea. “I’ll replace the gift, Thom, but I can’t give you back all your work.”

  The bard shook his head. “Our work, Your Highness. The annals told of everything you’ve done up until now to organize the crusade.” He glanced at the points of light falling beneath the water. “Perhaps that’s why Umberlee accepted the pages and all as a suitable sacrifice. They tell why we’re here.”

  Farl Bloodaxe clapped Thom on the back as he reached the bard’s side. “You may have saved us all,” he said, exhaustion apparent in his voice.

  The king cast a glance at the mainmast, then looked at Farl. “Will we need to make for shore? From the orders you were giving, I thought the mast was splintering.”

  The infantry commander shook his head. “We lost some rigging, and the masts were sorely tested by the storm. I’ve given command over to the first mate for now. He’s inspecting the masts and the sheets to make sure we’re still seaworthy, but I think the ship will be able to go on.”

  The rain continued to fall, so Azoun moved the discussion back to the great cabin. Thom Reaverson stayed on deck for a short time, watching the cog burn itself out, then slowly sink. The Welleran picked up some of the survivors, as did the dark-hulled Sembian ship that had passed the king’s carrack earlier.

  Before he left the railing, the bard took one last look into the sea. The blue-white lights that marked his sacrifice were gone. As he gazed into the inky water, Thom Reaverson wondered if Azoun or anyone else could truly understand what he’d given up. The pages that Umberlee had taken could never be exactly reproduced. They might have been his best work, now lost to the world.

  Then again, Thom realized suddenly, perhaps the new annals he would write would be better. He returned to the great cabin to begin his notes anew, hoping that the goddess’s hand had granted him an unintended favor.

  7

  Blood and Thunder

  The storm caused by Umberlee’s wrath was the last bad weather the fleet saw on its way across the Inner Sea. Most of the days were bright and breezy, and the cogs, coasters, and carracks made good time toward the free city of Telflamm. Still, each day presented new problems for the ragtag navy and the soldiers unaccustomed to life at sea.

  This particular morning, on a Sembian ship in the crusaders’ fleet, Razor John rubbed his shoulder in a futile attempt to work out a knotted muscle. The fletcher’s back had begun to ache continuously after his first night aboard the dark-hulled, square-sailed cog, and he’d been unable to shake the pain since. The constant damp and perpetual hard labor he faced each day only aggravated the problem.

  Sighing, John pushed his rough, spray-soaked blanket aside and sat up. Like most of the other passengers onboard the Sarnath, he slept on the open deck. In fact, the shortage of storage space on the cog meant that many of the sailors and soldiers on her slept, ate, and passed their free time on deck. Still, Razor John was a hearty soul, and he quickly acclimated to the everpresent dampness and the aches it caused.

  He couldn’t get used to the lack of privacy. Only high in the rigging could anyone escape the bustle of the deck, and that was certainly not the safest place to be. Four sailors had already plummeted to their deaths from the masts, the victims of a single misplaced step. Picking up half the survivors of the ship struck by lightning during the storm hadn’t helped the overcrowding either. The refugees from the burned ship had swelled the ranks aboard the Sarnath almost to capacity.

  Clasping his hands high over his head and stretching again, John said, “Time to get up, Mal.” When the snoring lump next to the bowsprit didn’t move, the fletcher kicked it softly with a toe.

  “Leave me be, son of a Sembian pig,” Mal grunted. He pulled his blanket up over his head, muttering incoherent curses.

  Razor John frowned. Mal—or Malmondes of Suzail, as John had discovered his full name to be—had proved himself quite adept at starting brawls with comments like that one. Though Mal was seemingly a good-hearted man, the fletcher found it hard to see beyond his many prejudices. The fact that John, Mal, and their other companion, Kiri, were traveling on a Sembian cog only made the problem worse.

  John nudged the ham-fisted soldier again. “Don’t give the first mate an excuse to start in on you again, Mal.” As the lump beneath the spray-soaked blanket grumbled, the fletcher pulled on boots and placed a shapeless felt hat on his mop of sandy hair.

  “Won’t get up again, eh?”

  Razor John started, then turned to face the person who’d just posed the question. “No, Kiri,” he said. “Just like every morning.”

  The thin, brown-haired woman handed John two hard biscuits and a piece of fruit. The fletcher let his gaze wander over the woman’s lithe form to her slightly round face. As usual, her brown eyes were bright and made John glad to see her. In fact, he had recently found himself using images of Kiri and her smile as shields against the boredom and fatigue that assailed everyone aboard ship.

  “Don’t fret, John. If Mal sleeps for much longer, we’ll split his morningfeast.” Kiri began to juggle the biscuits as she waited for a reaction from the blanket-covered warrior.

  She didn’t have to wait long, for Mal soon rolled over and scowled at her. The blond soldier quickly held one of his large fists in front of his eyes, shielding them from the bright morning sun. “Only you would think of something that low, Kiri Trollslayer.”

  The soldier spoke the woman’s name with as much venom as he could muster so early in the morning. He knew that Kiri hated her family name of Trollslayer. She hadn’t revealed it to John or Mal at all; they had learned it from another adventurer onboard the Sarnath. Kiri had denied the name at first, but then reluctantly admitted that her father was indeed the famous Cormyrian freebooter, Borlander the Trollslayer.

  “At least I have a family name, Mal. I know who my father is,” Kiri now retorted, trying to show as little annoyance as possible.

  Mal laughed a deep braying
laugh. “Ha. Good one, Kiri.” The woman knit her brows in confusion. Her reply had been far from original. But then, she realized, Malmondes of Suzail was far from witty.

  Both Razor John and Kiri Trollslayer shook their heads as Mal lumbered to his feet and stumbled to the galley. They both found the warrior trying on their patience, but he seemed completely devoted to them. In fact, John and Kiri found it difficult to get away from him for more than a few minutes at a time. And though they enjoyed what little time they had alone, for now, at least, the couple was resigned to Mal’s presence. There was simply nowhere on the ship to hide from him.

  “By the Goddess of Pain, I hate that name,” Kiri cursed softly but passionately as soon as Mal was out of earshot. She kicked the soldier’s blanket up against the gunwale and sat down on the bowsprit.

  John looked at her sympathetically. “Are you ready to tell me why yet?”

  Kiri sighed and glanced around. A Sembian sailor swabbed the deck nearby, while two others just free of watch curled up against a nearby hatch to sleep. “With that kind of name—,” she began, then stopped abruptly when one of the dozing Sembian sailors looked up at her.

  “Mind your own damned business,” Kiri snapped. She leaned toward the sailor as if daring him to reply. He snorted a laugh, then turned and at least pretended not to be listening.

  Razor John moved closer to Kiri. “Go on,” he urged. More than anyone the fletcher had met—including the flower girl in Suzail’s marketplace—she ignited his interest. The more he knew about her, the better.

  Kiri locked her sparkling eyes on John’s face and smiled. “People expect me to be some kind of professional troll killer. I’ve never even seen a troll in my life. One might come up and bite me, and I wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from a tax collector.”

  The Sembian sailor rolled over again. “Have you heard the joke about the tax collector?” he asked, ignoring Kiri’s angry stare. “No? All right, what’s the boldest thing in Faerun?” When no one replied, the sailor said, “A tax collector’s shirt. It hangs around the neck of a thief every day.”

  “That isn’t the way I heard it,” Mal said, standing above the sailor. A look of confusion crossed his thick-boned, fleshy face. “I thought the joke was about Sembian millers.”

  For an instant Kiri considered telling Mal that the sailor had just finished a joke about King Azoun, for that would certainly provoke the warrior into hitting the nosy sailor. She relented, deciding that a fight would mean another run-in between Mal and the first mate. No one needed that. “He just got it wrong, Mal. Hear any news in the galley?”

  The blond soldier shoved a whole biscuit in his mouth, chewed twice, then swallowed. “Yeah, actually I did. One of the cooks heard that the captain of Azoun’s carrack, the, uh—” He scratched his head in confusion.

  “Welleran,” John said between bites of fruit. He glanced at Mal and realized that the thickness of his facial bones accentuated the bewildered look that often clung to the warrior.

  “Yeah,” Mal said, “the Welleran. Anyway, the captain supposedly took some of the gold that was meant to be sacrificed to Umberlee before the fleet left Suzail. They say that he was the cause of that storm.”

  “They going to give him a trial?” Kiri asked, leaning back against the railing.

  Mal wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coarse woolen shirt. “Nah. He’s dead. Got washed overboard during the storm.”

  “The gods take their due,” Razor John noted. Kiri nodded, and Mal just scratched his chest through his damp clothing.

  A voice from the rigging broke the silence that followed the fletcher’s comment. “Ship off the starboard!”

  The companions squinted until they saw a small speck near the horizon. In minutes, the Sarnath’s bow had been realigned toward the dot. John, Kiri, and Mal sat near the bowsprit for a time, watching the other ship grow larger and larger. The first mate, a cross, foul-mouthed woman, came by soon and sent them to their morning tasks.

  Mal muttered defamations against Sembians, dalesmen, and anyone else he could think of as he made his way to the ship’s hold. John didn’t envy the soldier his duty, which was to feed, clean, and exercise the horses stored in the deepest part of the ship. The animals were kept in slings much of the time to prevent injury. That captivity made them high-strung and skittish, though. Many was the day that Mal came back from his duty with a bloody bite mark or large purple bruise from one of his charges.

  Kiri cheerfully went to her station in the rigging. The daughter of Borlander the Trollslayer had keen eyes, so she was often assigned lookout duty. Despite the fact that her job was more dangerous than Mal’s, she relished the time it gave her away from the crowded deck. She’d even invited John up into the masts on occasion, but the fletcher found the heights too unsettling to stay there long.

  Razor John spent his days working on arrows and fletching. Azoun’s generals had made it clear to all the ship’s captains that weaponsmiths, including fletchers and bowyers, were to be given the time to work on tools for the crusaders. Without the freedom to stroll, selling his wares, John found the work a little tedious. Still, if he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the slight swaying of the deck, he could picture himself back in the marketplace. The noisy bustle of sailors and soldiers, the salty tang in the air, and the cry of seabirds lofting over the ship certainly made it easy to imagine the Sarnath as an extension of Suzail’s market.

  The fletcher was letting his mind wander over his days in the marketplace when he heard Kiri’s voice from high on a mast. “Ship close to the starboard.”

  “Signal her” came another voice from the deck. John listened for a reply, but if there was one, it was lost in the murmur of the people nearby.

  Quickly John stacked the shaft he was working on to the pile he’d finished in the hour since the ship had first been sighted. He stood, stretched, and glanced at the ruined carrack that foundered a few hundred yards from the Sarnath.

  The derelict ship’s rigging hung loose, and its sails were shredded and limp. Gulls stood unmolested on the rail, a clear indication that something was wrong onboard the tri-masted carrack. For ten minutes, the Sarnath tried to raise a response from the ship, which someone eventually identified by its serpentine masthead as the Turmish vessel, Ouroboros. No one on the transport replied to the shouts or signals from the Sembian cog.

  “The Ouroboros is part of the crusaders’ fleet,” a sailor told John. The fletcher frowned and wondered if he knew anyone who’d shipped out on the now-abandoned vessel.

  A sharp rap on the shoulder brought John out of his contemplation. “Ho, fletcher,” the first mate snapped. “Come with me. I’ve got some real work for you.” She spun around and pushed her way across the crowded deck.

  Razor John sighed, then followed. The first mate had decided shortly after the start of the trip to make his and Kiri’s life miserable; the fight Mal had started with her the first night out from Suzail was certainly the reason. Still, the fletcher knew it was futile to argue.

  “Help lower that,” the first mate told John. She pointed to a small boat that hung at the rail. Without a word, he went to work with three others, lowering the craft and its two passengers into the water.

  One of the men in the boat was a Sembian sailor. The other was a young, gold-haired cleric. His robes and the holy symbol around his neck indicated his worship of Lathander, the God of Dawn and Renewal. “I’ll signal you if I need help,” the priest shouted as the sailor took up the oars and started to row toward the Ouroboros.

  The first mate placed a rough hand on the shoulder of the captain, who now stood nearby, and said, “We should be ready to attack if need be.” She pointed to the wallowing carrack and added, “This might be some kind of pirate trap.”

  The captain, a slothful, careless man with a few days growth of beard darkening his cheeks, simply nodded. He scanned the seemingly abandoned ship with watery gray eyes, then turned his attention to flicking the smaller spots of dirt from his s
oiled white and gold uniform. This was a scene that Razor John had seen repeated in various forms throughout the voyage. It was clear, to the fletcher at least, that the first mate actually ran the Sarnath.

  “All right, fletcher. Get your bow and get right back here.” The first mate cupped her hands over her small, cruel mouth. “All archers to the starboard rail. Bring your weapons.”

  The cry was relayed around the cog, and John listened to men and women grumble as they gathered up their weapons from the spots where they slept. The fletcher took his longbow from his bed near the bowsprit and returned to the first mate’s side.

  Much of the ship’s attention was focused on the little boat as the sailor and the cleric made their way across to the Turmish ship, then boarded her. Only the gold-haired priest climbed up to the carrack’s deck. The few mottled seabirds that had gathered along the rails scattered into the air when he got close. Squawking and screeching angrily, the birds circled over the two ships. A few of the men attempted to shoot the scavengers out of the sky, but the first mate swiftly ordered the men who’d fired at the birds be put to hard labor for the afternoon. John simply frowned at the waste of good arrows for impromptu target practice.

  After a few moments the priest appeared at the Ouroboros’s rail and waved to the Sarnath. “No one left alive,” someone muttered behind John. The fletcher was thinking the very same thing.

  The Sembian sailor rowed the small boat back to the Sarnath faster than he had rowed away from her. The priest seemed to be bowed in prayer the entire way back.

  “Well?” the captain asked when the ship’s boat got near. “What did you find?”

  The priest tried to stand, but the boat rocked so much that he nearly tumbled into the sea. His companion grabbed him by the hem of his scarlet robe and yanked him back to a sitting position. From their erratic, almost frantic actions, it seemed clear that both men had been frightened by what had been discovered on the abandoned carrack.