Corsair (40 page)

The click of talons on stone and the evil chittering of the neogi speaking in their own tongue came from the passage directly in front of her. She stood paralyzed for an instant. “Hide!” she whispered to Selsha, pushing her into one of the passageways. She started after her daughter, but realized that the glowing orb she carried gave them away. Quickly she stepped back out into the intersection and rolled the light down one of the other passages—and then the neogi appeared. Mirya pressed herself into the shadow of one of the other doorways and prayed that the creatures hadn’t seen her.

Several of the monsters chattered to each other, pausing for a moment in the intersection. Then they continued on their way—turning down

the hall where Selsha was hiding. Anorher of the huge, apelike monsters followed after the little spider-creatures, and Mirya almost gave herself away by stepping out of the shadows too soon. She waited a moment for the creatures to pass and then crept out of her hiding place. Heart hammering in her chest, Mirya hurried after the neogi and their hulk, following as closely as she dared. Selsha must have fled down the passage in front of the monsters. Mirya prayed that her daughter was calm enough to seek out a side passage to duck into, or a small room where she might find a place to hide and let the monsters behind her pass. Selsha was a small girl, and she was good at hiding … but the moon-keep’s monsters terrified the child. It was more likely that she was fleeing in blind panic, in which case there was no telling where she might turn.

Mirya came to a large open room and realized that they’d returned to the room by the postern gate again. The party of monsters she followed turned and disappeared up one of the other hallways that met here, and Mirya advanced cautiously into the room behind them. Selsha might have fled down any of the passages leading away from the room. She wheeled in a circle, hoping for some hint of which way her daughter might have gone. She listened for a moment, but all she could hear were loathsome scuttling footsteps of the neogi drawing away. Then she realized that the postern gate was standing open by a double handspan. “Oh, no,” she breathed. She hurried to the gate and peered outside.

One of Selsha’s shoes lay on the stone landing, atop a short flight of stone stairs that led down into a tiny clearing at the keep’s foot.

She closed her eyes, sickened with fear. Selsha was out in that jungle somewhere, with its monstrous plants and its unknown perils.

There was no choice for it, then. Mirya quickly pulled the keep’s gate closed behind her, hoping that their pursuers inside would assume they’d fled down one of the other passageways inside. Then she picked up Selsha’s shoe and hurried down the overgrown path leading into the black moon’s mist-wreathed jungle.

17 Marpenoth, The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Seadrake dropped down out of the moonlets black sky like a hawk stooping on its prey. The starry compass glowed with silver light in front of the ship’s wheel, its strange symbols spinning swiftly with the precipitous descent. Geran stood at the helm and grinned fiercely, feeling the sails fill with the strange winds of the dark moonlet and the deck trembling to the rush of iron-shod feet. He had no idea what waited for him below the battlements of the ebon keep, but he meant to meet it with fine elven steel in his hand and spells of ruin on his blade. Whatever else happened, he’d teach the Black Moon a lesson or two about preying on Hulburg … and if Sergen was somewhere in that dark fortress, he wouldn’t escape Geran’s wrath a second time.

“Lord Geran! We’re fallin’ too fast!” Andurth Galehand shouted in his ear. The bowsprit pointed directly at the midships deck of Kraken Queen, tied up alongside its wharf under the black battlements, and Seadrake raced down on the pirate ship with such speed that Geran’s stomach was left behind. “Slow th’ approach, I beg ye!”

“Speed and surprise are our best weapons!” Geran answered. He could see the pirate ship’s crew desperately running for their stations, even as others poured out of the keep’s gates or hurried to man the battlements. Seadrake was low enough now that she seemed to sail through the skies of this strange, small world instead of skimming across the empty blackness of the Sea of Night. The pirate keep stood atop a steep-sided hill overlooking the lake; strange-looking trees and thick, coiling vines in a dozen hues of red, purple, and blue crowded in close around the keep and the shore. A weird silver mist seemed to hang in the air, cool and humid,

and tendrils of cloud seethed slowly through the low spots in the hills ringing the lake.

“There are ruins in the jungle,” Hamil said. He pointed at the closer shore of the glittering blue lake. Geran glimpsed crumbling towers of black stone half hidden in the vales near the lakeshorc. “Do you think the Black Moon’s got allies nearby?”

“I don’t know, but the sooner we take the ship and get into the keep, the less likely it is that anyone else can interfere.” Geran spared a glance for Hamil. “As I said—speed and surprise.”

He looked back to Kraken Queen, and judged that they were indeed closing too fast. “Slow the descent!” he said aloud. The ship replied, lifting her bow a bit and leveling out. Seadrake’s company—almost seventy Shieldsworn and veteran mercenaries from the merchant companies plus almost forty more sailors eager for a fight—lined the rails, armed and ready to give battle to the Black Moon corsairs. “Grapples, stand ready!” he called to his crew. “Archers, fire as you will!”

The crew raised a ragged chorus of war cries and defiant shouts. Bowstrings sang and crossbows snapped sharply, sweeping the deck of the pirate vessel below. Sarth blasted a knot of pirates trying to ready one of Kraken Queen’s catapults with a crackling ball of green lightning. Geran held his course until the last possible moment before turning the wheel sharply and willing the bow up and the stern down. “Make ready to drop sail!” he shouted. “Brace for impact!” The ship veered wildly before alighting in the sapphire waters of the moon-lake with an immense splash. Despite Geran’s warning, fully half the hands on deck were knocked off their feet … but now Seadrake surged forward in the water, coming up alongside her quarry from astern. The Hulburgans leaped back to their feet, and deckhands swarmed aloft to lower the warship’s sails as Geran turned the wheel the other way to drive his bow alongside Kraken Queen. Grapple-throwers heaved their hooks across the gap. The Hulburgan ship came to a jarring stop, tangled up with the Black Moon flagship.

“Over th’ side!” Andurth Galehand yelled. It was unnecessary, since Seadrake’s company was already swarming across to Kraken Queen. Hamil vaulted up to the rail, seized a hanging shroud, and swung over to the pirate ship’s quarterdeck. Geran followed an instant later with his teleport spell, spanning the gap with a single, bold stride. He immediately found himself in the middle of a furious fray by Kraken Queen’s mizzenmast.

Dozens of pirates swarmed up on deck from every hatch and companionway imaginable, desperate to repel the attack.

“Arvan sannoghan!”Geran shouted. The mystic words evoked a sheath of brilliant flame along his blade. He hurled himself against the pirates, great arcs of razor-sharp fire trailing from his sword strokes. He slashed down one man with a searing cut from shoulder to hip, took the head off a goblin creeping up on his right flank, and drove another pirate to the deck with his assault before finishing the man with a thrust to the midsection. Hamil fought beside him, a dagger in each hand, guarding Geran’s back or darting out to hamstring an unwary foe. By Kraken Queen’s mainmast, Sarth burned pirates down with fiery blasts from his rune-carved scepter or blasted them overboard with words of arcane power.

“We’ve got them!” Hamil cried.

“I think you’re right!” Geran shouted in reply. Seadrake’s sudden appearance had indeed caught the pirates off-guard; many of the corsairs were off inside the keep, leaving only half a crew on the pirate flagship. Those pirates who were on hand to defend their ship were disorganized and poorly armed. They wore leather jerkins or no armor at all, and many fought with boarding axes, belaying pins, or daggers. Against them the Shieldsworn and the merchant armsmen were fitted out in mail, with swords and shields. More to the point, the Hulburgans were spoiling for a t. With Sarth’s destructive spells and Geran’s swordmagic to lead them, their disciplined ranks swept across Kraken Queen, cutting the pirates on board to pieces.

Geran found that no enemies were within sword’s reach and paused to take stock of the battle. Seadrake warriors held Kraken Queen … for the moment. But more pirates streamed out of the keep’s gate, hurrying to join the fight. And others took up positions on the battlements overlooking the docks, sniping at the invaders with crossbow fire. A Jannarsk armsman near him shrieked in pain and fell to the deck, hands cupped around a bolt quivering in his face, and a Shieldsworn grunted and staggered back when a quarrel punched through his shield and transfixed his arm underneath. Then the pirates from the keep stormed aboard Kraken Queen from the wharf.

“I spoke too soon—here they come!” Hamil said. He crouched down behind the gunwale, sheathed his daggers, and shrugged his shortbow from his shoulder. Then he popped up to send an arrow winging up to

the battlement overlooking the wharf. A Black Moon archer cried out and tumbled from the rampart.

“They would’ve been wiser to turtle up inside their keep,” Geran said. He ducked down by the gunwale, trying to gauge how much the pirate reinforcements had changed the course of the battle. So far, the Hulburgans were standing their ground. “We don’t have any siege gear!”

“They can’t afford to let us take this ship. It’s their only way back to Faerun.”

Geran realized that Hamil was right; the pirates had to retake their ship, or else the Hulburgans could simply sail it off and strand them in their moon-keep. A sudden inspiration struck him, and he looked around the pirate vessel’s quarterdeck. Kraken Queen’s starry compass sat in a hooded binnacle just in front of the helm. It looked much like the one from Moonshark, although its color was more of a rich violet hue. He picked up a boarding axe from a dead pirate’s hand and wrecked the device’s frame with several hard strokes. Then he picked the orb out of the ruined frame. “There, that should do it. Kraken Queen’s going nowhere for now.”

Hamil raised an eyebrow. “Stealing Kamoth’s magic compass?”

“I don’t see why he should have one. If the fight turns against us, we can retreat, and he’ll be stranded here forever.” The starry compass would also make for a very valuable bargaining chip if Kamoth put a knife to Mirya’s throat. He couldn’t be sure, but he had to believe that the pirate lord would part with his hostages in order to get the device back. Geran handed the orb to Hamil. “Here, take this back to Seadrake, and put it someplace safe. It might prove very useful. I’m going to see what I can do about breaking this stalemate.”

“Done,” Hamil said. He tucked it under his arm and hurried forward, looking for a good place to cross back to the Hulburgan warship.

Geran turned his attention back to the fight. A crossbow quarrel ricocheted from the unseen wardings that protected him, spinning away through the air. The fight had grown more heated while he sabotaged the ship’s magical compass; scores of pirates in a howling, reckless mob fought to win back rheir ship. Kraken Queen was in Hulburgan hands, but the fighting had moved down to the wharf between the keep and the moored ship. Here Seadrake’s assault had momentarily stalled. For the moment, the numbers on each side seemed close, and if the Hulburgans had the advantages of armor and discipline, the pirates had the raking fire from the keep and fierce desperation on their side. Then he spotted a figure at the head of the pirate counterattack, a bearded man who wore scarlet armor worked in the shape of fishlike scales. Behind him, the Black Moon pirates hurled themselves into the battle with fresh zeal.

“Kamoth,” Geran breathed. He vaulted down from the quarterdeck to the wharf and threaded his way through knots of battling soldiers and corsairs. He parried or dodged several blows aimed at him as he darted forward to confront the pirate lord.

Kamoth led the way with a cutlass in one hand and a hatchet in the other as the pirates fought their way back toward their flagship. He cut down a pair of Hulburgan sailors who stood against him then whirled to face Geran’s attack. Their swords flashed and rang together in the furious melee at the foot of the gangplank. Geran attacked with a high slash at Kamoth’s face, but the pirate lord blocked it and countered with a vicious cut of his left-hand axe. He pushed forward, pressing Geran closely, keeping their blades locked as he tried to get Geran in reach of the hatchet. Geran gave almost ten feet of ground across the blood-slicked wharf before he freed his blade and opened the distance again. The two men circled each other warily while the battle raged all around them.

“I know you, Geran!” the pirate lord said with a fierce laugh. “But I remember you as a lad of fifteen or so. You’ve learned to be handy with a blade, I see.”

“I studied four years in Myth Drannor.” Geran was careful to keep up his guard. “This blade I won in the Coronal’s Guard.”

“Well done, my boy!” Kamoth said. He wore the same fierce grin Geran remembered from years ago, as if all that stood between them even now were a few boyish pranks he’d been caught at and hoped to laugh away. “I never had the benefit of much formal study in sword play. 1 had to pick it up as I went along.” He attacked suddenly with a furious onslaught. He was quick, and Geran saw where Sergen had gotten his speed from. His style was just as unschooled and unorthodox as he claimed. When Geran parried Kamoth’s thrust, the pirate lord hooked the curving blade of his hatchet over Geran’s sword, trapping their blades together, and nearly wrenched Geran’s sword from his hand. Geran twisted his blade sideways and pulled it free and then ducked under a wild swing at his head as they spun past each other and separated again.

“That’s Seadrake there, isn’t it?” Kamoth asked, breathing hard. “How’d you manage to follow me here, my boy?”

“I’ve got Moonshark’s starry compass,” Geran answered. He circled warily, looking for an opening. “And Narsk’s letters led me here.”