Corsair botm-2

by Richard Baker

  “Of course. But it is certainly not speculation to observe that you and your comrades are hardly the typical sellswords or outlaws who sail under the Black Moon.”

  “What does the crew make of this, then?”

  “Because they fear your magic, they will follow you for now,” Tao Zhe answered. “No one liked Narsk-or Sorsil. But you should watch your back. And you should not expect the crew to deal with challengers for you, not until you demonstrate that you are a captain worth following.”

  “I understand.”

  “I only say what is plainly true,” Tao Zhe answered. He finished with his needlework and covered the wound with a hot compress. “There is little more I can do. It will trouble you for a tenday or so. Try not to get stabbed there again.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  The old Shou grinned. He collected his medicine kit and retreated to his galley.

  Murkelmor managed to rig a working rudder cable only a couple of hours after sunrise. With the rudder repaired, Geran was able to turn Moonshark back to the northwest and Hulburg. But the strong autumn wind was directly out of that quarter, and so he had to resign himself to a west by southwesterly tack, heading back out toward the middle of the sea as the pirate ship fought its way back to windward. A gray, stiff chop arose by afternoon, so that Moonshark battered her way through whitecapped waves as she ran, soaking the decks with cold spray. The rough seas ruled out any idea of taking in sail and putting out oars that Geran might have entertained; rowing was possible under such conditions, but just barely.

  In midafternoon Geran decided that he couldn’t afford to extend his tack any farther to the south, and came north to run across the wind. He wasn’t sure if he’d strike the coastline east or west of Hulburg at this point, but he was fairly certain that he’d be nowhere near as far west as the ruins of Seawave. Due to their night of sailing off course and the morning of drifting ahead of the wind, there was no way they’d reach the Black Moon’s rendezvous point. If he had been intending to join the raid on Hulburg, he’d have to steer straight for the city at this point and join the rest of the flotilla there.

  Since the afternoon was growing late, he figured he’d better prepare the crew for a change of plan. He called Murkelmor, Tao Zhe, and a few of the other fist leaders together on the quarterdeck about an hour before sunset. “Between the rudder damage and the shifting of the wind, I think we’re too far east of the Black Moon rendezvous to meet up with the other ships,” he told them. “They’re gathering a good twenty miles west of the town in just a couple of hours. But I think we can reach Hulburg by midnight without too much trouble, and that’s what I intend to steer for. We know that’s where the rest of the Black Moon is bound, and we can join the flotilla there.”

  “The High Captain will no’ be pleased with us,” Murkelmor said.

  “It can’t be helped at this point,” said Geran. “If the attack on Hulburg succeeds, I’d wager that many sins will be forgiven. If not, well, I’ll take the blame.”

  Moonshark kept on her northerly tack for the rest of the afternoon and through the sunset. Still no sight of the northern shore greeted them, and Geran began to fear that he’d somehow completely lost his reckoning in the last few hours. He couldn’t bear the idea that Moonshark might be too far away for him to get some word of warning to Hulburg. At least the raid would be one ship short if that were the case, but then he and his companions would have to deal with an extremely-perhaps lethally-disappointed crew. Finally, as the last embers of sunset gleamed low in the sky to the west, the lookout aloft called out “Land ho!” Geran hurried to the bow, peering into the gloaming to see what he could make of their position, and his heart sank.

  They were still ten miles east of Hulburg, perhaps more. He quickly calculated time and distances in his head, trying to envision the course they’d have to follow. With this wind, Moonshark could make perhaps seven or eight knots running close-hauled, but they’d have to cover maybe three times as much distance on the tack as they actually managed to make good against the wind. That meant another four or five hours of sailing before they reached the Arches. He returned to the quarterdeck, thinking furiously.

  “Do you know this stretch of coast?” Hamil asked him. “How far from Hulburg are we?”

  “I do, and we’re too far east,” Geran answered. “I think we’re out of time.”

  Hamil and Sarth exchanged looks with each other. The sorcerer frowned. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  Geran didn’t see any other alternatives. He pointed at the coastline, perhaps three miles distant. “Unless I’m badly mistaken, that’s Sulan Head. It’s about ten miles east of Hulburg by the old coastal road. I’d bring the ship in to land on the beach at its foot, but that might take another hour, and I don’t dare let the crew see me do something like that. They would surely suspect treachery. Sarth, can you reach the coast from here with your flying spell?”

  Sarth studied the distance and nodded. “Yes, and perhaps a little more.”

  “Then I need you to leave the ship, get to Hulburg, and warn Kara, the harmach, whomever you can find that the Black Moon raid is on its way. I don’t know if I can beat the Black Moon ships to Hulburg from here, not with the way the weather is running, but you may be able to on foot. By my reckoning, you’ve got three or four hours to cover the distance. Can you do it?”

  “It must be done, so it will be done.” Sarth looked back at Moonshark’s deck. “What about you and Hamil? If the crew notices that I am missing, they may rise against you.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re below, using Narsk’s cabin to study your spells. That should work well enough for a short time.” Geran paused as a stray thought crossed his mind. “That reminds me-Hamil, what’s in that letter you found in Narsk’s pocket?”

  Hamil frowned. “I’d forgotten it. Just a moment.” He pulled it out and carefully opened it under the light of the swinging stern lantern. After a moment, he shook his head and passed it to Sarth. “It looks like some kind of incantation.”

  Sarth glanced at it and shrugged. “Arcane words are written in several different tongues, and I had thought I would at least recognize a few words in any of them. But this is nonsense to me. Keep it safe, and I will see if I can use magic to decipher it when I have the opportunity to study it carefully.” He looked back to Geran. “What will you do with Moonshark?”

  Geran smiled grimly. “I still need to get to Hulburg, and Moonshark’s going to take me there. Now, let’s get you on your way, because I’ve got to turn the ship and run away from the coast again in just a few minutes.”

  FIFTEEN

  8 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

  Kraken Queen raced past the Arches of Hulburg’s harbor an hour after midnight, her oars sweeping her eagerly ahead through the whitecaps and the wind-driven rain. At her back came Daring, Wyvern, and Seawof-all told, almost five hundred Black Moon corsairs thirsting for blood, rape, and treasure. Few lights showed in the town, only a handful of streetlamps and the occasional lanternlit doorway of a tavern or merchant tradeyard. Sergen Hulmaster shaded his eyes from the wind and the rain, peering anxiously at the shoreline. If some word of the Black Moon fleet had come to Hulburg, he expected that ranks of Shieldsworn, merchant coster mercenaries, and even the laughable militia companies of the Spearmeet would be waiting by the wharves to repel the attack. But the waterside streets seemed abandoned.

  Sergen allowed himself a small smile. “You were right, Father,” he said. “I think we’ve surprised them.” Given the mysterious absence of Moonshark, he’d spent most of the three-hour sprint from the ruins of Seawave fighting down his own misgivings about the enterprise. It seemed an inauspicious beginning to the night, and he’d urged his father to wait. But Kamoth had been impatient to launch the attack, worried that the worsening weather might make it impossible to strike in a timely manner and that delay would result in the fleet’s discovery.

  The High Captain grinned fierc
ely, throwing a challenge to fate. “Of course I was right!” he said. “You’ve no stomach for this sort of stroke, Sergen. Caution and forethought are fine, but sometimes you need to throw fortune to the wind and see what comes.” He held out his arms, allowing the crewmen who attended him to finish strapping on his scarlet armor. It was fashioned in the shape of a long coat of piscine scales, with finlike embellishments at the joints and an open-faced helm with a fanged sea-serpent design.

  Sergen glanced down at his own armor, a light shirt of black chain mail beneath a tough leather coat. “I hope we don’t miss Moonshark’s complement. Another seventy men would greatly fortify my confidence.”

  Kamoth waved one gauntleted hand at the sky. “Perhaps, but the wind and weather favor us too much to wait for that sluggard Narsk, my boy. A swift run from the rendezvous, a dark night to hinder anyone trying to organize a defense of the town, and a quick escape when it’s time to go. The Prince of Demons will drink his fill tonight!”

  Sergen nodded but did not answer. Long ago Kamoth had sworn him to the service of the demon lord Demogorgon, but the exiled lordling had never found much use for groveling in front of bloodstained altars. He was content to allow his father to glorify Demogorgon in any way he wished, so long as Kamoth didn’t expect him to do the same. “Any sign of Seadrake?” he called to the lookouts.

  “No, Lord Sergen! She’s not in port!” the man aloft called back down.

  Sergen relaxed a little. Outnumbered four to one, Seadrake wouldn’t have lasted long against the Black Moon flotilla, but he knew better than to underestimate his stepsister, Kara, or his stepcousin, Geran. He’d done so only a few short months ago, and it had cost him the lordship of Hulburg, the friendship of Mulmaster, a great amount of wealth and power, and very nearly his life. Somehow they would have found a way to cause him more trouble with their one warship than they should have been able to in any reasonable world. “But if she’s not here, then where is she?” he wondered aloud and began to worry all over again.

  “Likely sniffing after our trail in the waters of the west end,” Kamoth answered. He finished donning his armor. The pirate lord checked the fit with several hard slaps to his shoulders and chest. Then he moved over to the rail and looked at the other vessels following Kraken Queen into the harbor. “Give the signal!” he told the deckhand standing there.

  The fellow lifted above the ship’s sternrail a bullseye lantern that held a red-tinted piece of glass. He opened and closed its shutter three times. From the quarterdecks of the other ships, red lights winked back at Kraken Queen in answer. The flotilla split up as each ship began to steer toward its own assigned landing point. “Damn Moonshark, and damn that fool Narsk,” Kamoth muttered. “I hope for his sake that I don’t find reason to wish I’d waited for the fifth ship.”

  “The weather might’ve delayed him, High Captain,” Kraken Queen’s first mate said. “He might be only an hour behind us.”

  “He’d better be, or the next time I see him, I swear I’ll strap him to the foretop with his own guts and leave him there for the gulls!” Kamoth went back to the ship’s wheel and peered ahead over the rowers. “Easy right rudder now, helm! There, steady as she goes. All right … all right … avast rowing! Raise and ship oars!”

  Kraken Queen glided ahead on momentum, coasting closer to the town’s wharves. The abandoned Veruna pier was Kamoth’s target, and the old pirate expertly guided his ship alongside. It seemed too fast to Sergen, and he surreptitiously braced himself against the rail. But then gangs of deckhands leaped to the pier with mooring lines, checking the large galley with the heavy creaking of taut lines and timber pilings. The whole wharf trembled as Kraken Queen came to a stop.

  “Well done!” Kamoth called. “Now go! The town’s yours for the taking!”

  With a wild chorus of shouts, laughter, and battle cries, Kraken Queen’s crew swarmed over the side and ran into the town. Kamoth himself grinned once at Sergen and followed after his crew, a wicked cutlass gleaming in his hand.

  Sergen summoned Kerth and the rest of his magically bound bodyguards and followed more purposefully to the streets of town. He didn’t see any particular need to murder, loot, or rape anyone; he was a very wealthy man, and he could afford all the women he cared for. His task for the night was to watch for resistance and direct the Black Moon corsairs against any trouble spots. If his father wanted to lead from the front and set an example of bloodthirst for the men, that was Kamoth’s concern. Sergen wanted to make sure the raid would have the effect on Hulburg that he desired-no more, and no less.

  The first screams rang out in the night, followed by the clash of steel on steel. Shouts of alarm arose from the sleeping town. It was not exactly the triumphant return to Hulburg Sergen had envisioned for himself during the long months of exile in Melvaunt, but he couldn’t suppress a predatory grin. He was likely the single most dangerous enemy of the Hulmasters, the man who’d come closer to unseating the harmachs than anyone in a hundred years, and for tonight at least he roamed the streets with impunity. Geran or Kara would have a fit if they knew I was standing here watching the sacking of the harbor, he thought. The smell of smoke drifted to his nostrils, and the ruddy red glare of fires began to grow in the shadowed alleyways and winding streets. “This might turn out even better than I’d intended,” he said.

  “Not for the Hulburgans,” his armsman Kerth answered with a hungry grin.

  “It’s the cost I must pay to unseat the harmach, Kerth. The Hulmasters brought this on themselves when Geran and Kara thwarted me before.” Sergen studied the scene for a moment longer and then walked back to the base of the wharf where Kraken Queen was tied up. Dozens of corsairs waited there anxiously, whooping with delight when another building caught fire and shouting encouragement at those of their fellows who remained in view. One man in five from all four ships had been ordered to assemble here, forming a strong reserve of manpower in case the Hulburgans managed to mount some unexpectedly determined defense of their town or tried to retaliate against the pirates’ ships. That, of course, was Sergen’s addition to Kamoth’s plan of attack. None of the fellows assigned this duty were happy about it, since they wanted to be released to participate in the sack. But Sergen was pleased to see at a quick count that most of the men promised had actually reported for this duty.

  “Can’t we just have a look in some of those storehouses over there?” one of the corsairs waiting in the reserve asked. He pointed across the street. “We won’t be far off, Lord Sergen.”

  “And what would the High Captain say if he called for you to help him, but you’d run off to start stuffing your pockets?” Sergen answered. “I think I’d mind my orders, if I were you. If all goes well, you’ll be relieved in an hour, and it’ll be your turn to enjoy the town.”

  The fellow looked glum, but he gave up the argument. Sergen decided to have a look around to see if there was someplace he could put the reserve to work, and led his small knot of bodyguards along Bay Street, searching for any signs of trouble. Gangs of pirates ran from building to building, some already burdened by armfuls of loot. First he checked on the Marstel merchant compound and was relieved to see that the Black Moon corsairs were avoiding it as they were supposed to. Then he headed inland a block and walked eastward along Cart Street, passing more pirates at their work. It might defeat my purpose if the Black Moon actually razes the town, he thought with a grimace. He wanted something left of the place, after all.

  The clash of arms grew heavier ahead-much heavier. Sergen frowned and hurried forward to take a look. He reached the corner of Cart Street and High Street, the heart of the town’s commerce district, and saw ahead of him a solid phalanx of the harmach’s own Shieldsworn. The Hulburgan soldiers, a small company of perhaps thirty or forty, fought their way down the street, driving the pirate gangs ahead of them. Sergen scowled at the show of early resistance. The Shieldsworn company was interfering with his long-laid plans to humble Hulburg, and he didn’t care for it in the least. They
needed to be broken, and the sooner the better. “Damn them!” Sergen snarled. “Where did they come from?”

  “Simple chance, I would guess,” Kerth answered. He moved in front of Sergen and eyed the approaching soldiers nervously. “It seems that not all the harmach’s soldiers were asleep tonight. That’s too many for us to deal with, Lord Sergen. We’d better move on.”

  “Agreed,” said Sergen. He frowned and reminded himself that no clash of arms ever went exactly as one planned. It was only to be expected that some of the town’s defenders would organize a brief resistance; fortunately the Black Moon was ready for them. “We’ll go back toward the docks and draw from the reserve to chase off these fellows.”

  They turned and retreated down Cart Street to the intersection with Plank Street, and here more fighting greeted Sergen and his guards. A large mass of Hulburgans, most wearing hastily donned coats of old mail or leather jerkins, held Plank Street against the roving gangs of pirates and likewise were advancing toward the harbor. It was more of the sort of resistance that Sergen had hoped to overwhelm with the initial surprise of the Black Moon attack, and he made a note to himself to send more pirates here too. But a dark suspicion was growing in his heart. “I don’t like the look of this,” he said to Kerth. “Come on!”

  He backtracked through the alleyway south of Cart Street and jogged westward to avoid the Spearmeet company. At the small square by the Council Hall, he found a strong detachment of Double Moon Coster and House Sokol sellswords standing watch, and he swore viciously. There were too many soldiers and militiamen ready to fight in the streets of the town. A few he might have expected, but there seemed to be companies of Hulburgans and mercenaries all over the town. “By Bane’s black hand, they were ready for us! They knew we were coming!” he snarled.

  “Do you think this is a trap, m’lord?” Kerth asked.