The Sellsword (5 page)

“It is useless to resist!” the bozak said like a bad actor in a traveling minstrel show. It never ceased to amaze Vanderjack how such a dangerous and intelligent race as the bozaks could resort to such terrible dialogue.

“I’ve heard that before!”

Gredchen rolled away and got to her feet. “Leave him alone! He’s under the baron’s hospitality, you reptilian thug!”

“She’s about to be grabbed from behind,” said the Hunter from about ten feet away.

The other bozak, thought Vanderjack. Mortal eyes couldn’t penetrate their magic, but ghosts could see right through it.

Vanderjack ducked a swing from the first bozak and launched himself away from the stable in Gredchen’s direction. Startled, she dropped to the mud. Lifecleaver cut through thin air but left behind it a gout of draconian ichor. The second bozak materialized, his invisibility spell ruined, clutching at his scaly throat.

The first bozak raised a hand and uttered a string of words in the language of magic. Vanderjack had no fluency in it, of course, but he knew the spidery-sounding tongue when he heard it.

“Lightning bolt!” cried the Conjurer before the bozak could finish the incantation.

Vanderjack grabbed Gredchen and spun her out of the way, narrowly avoiding the hot white light of the bozak’s bolt as it seared past him and into an outhouse. The outhouse exploded, the bozak cursed, and Vanderjack grinned in the Conjuror’s direction.

The second bozak, unable to vocalize spells thanks to the wound to his larynx, drew his scimitar and charged at Vanderjack. Bozaks were stronger and quicker than
the lesser baaz, but Vanderjack was stronger and quicker yet. Turning the oncoming blade to the side, the mercenary swung his sword around in a heavy riposte and took the bozak’s arm off at the elbow.

Vanderjack readied for another swing. A warning from the Apothecary stayed his hand, however, for Gredchen had picked herself up and thrown herself at the armless bozak. She tackled the draconian around the legs, knocking both of them over.

“You really don’t want to stay out of this, do you?” the sellsword grinned.

“Help me out here!” Gredchen yelled back, trying to force the bozak’s clawed hand from her face. The draconian made a sort of gargled snarl in an effort to intimidate the woman, but Vanderjack didn’t think it was having its intended effect.

“I’ll be right with you,” Vanderjack said mildly, turning to face off against the other bozak. Where was he? Another warning from the Conjuror allowed the mercenary to sidestep a fan-shaped gout of flames and close with the astonished draconian. Vanderjack drove his sword through the bozak’s midsection before the draconian could bring its sword up to block the killing stroke. Remembering the way in which bozaks die, he leaped clear of his slain foe just as the creature’s flesh shriveled away and its exposed skeleton began to smolder. Moments later, the bones exploded, flooding the courtyard with a monstrous green light.

A second explosion, just like the first, drew Vanderjack’s attention back to Gredchen. She had managed to end the life of the bozak she’d been wrestling with, and the look of shock and soot on her face was evidence enough to Vanderjack that she hadn’t faced a bozak’s death throes before.

“Should have warned you about that,” he said. “Nice work. Rolled over on its own sword, did it?”

Gredchen, who seemed mostly unhurt, though rattled from the blast, gave the sellsword a pained look. “Let’s just get out of here,” she said.

“You’ll get no argument from me.” He grinned and followed her through the trees toward the road to Pentar, quite aware that the noise they made in the courtyard would not have gone unnoticed.

Theodenes sat in a high-backed chair in his new office in the Monkey’s Ear, going over a pile of paperwork. His poleaxe was within arm’s reach, which for a gnome was about half the reach of the chair’s former occupant. Theo was drawing up his to-do list.

After only one day of being the newest recruiter in Pentar, Theo was already starting to realize that the position called for a great deal of bookkeeping. His cousin Thermocouplet was the family accountant, and Theo considered sending for him. All gnomes knew something about numbers, but the gang’s books were an order of difficulty higher than anything Theo had had to worry about before.

Unfortunately, Theo’s family had largely disowned him, being a mad gnome and all.

“Sir,” inquired a voice from the door. “I know it’s early, but there’s some recruits here for the muster.”

“Yes, quite right. Send them in.”

Theodenes knew he looked awkward in the overlarge chair, but he could manage a convincing enough look of professionalism when called to do so. As the three ne’er-do-wells came into the room, he lit a cigar and spun slowly around to face them.

The three men stared at the little cigar-smoking gnome seated behind the desk.

“Is there something the matter?” asked Theo, keeping his voice as deep and low as he could. “You look as if you’ve never seen a gnome in charge of an operation like this before.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said one. “I don’t think we have.”

Theo studied the recruits. The one who had spoken was an unshaven lout with a shock of dirty blond hair and sailor’s trews. The man next to him had Nordmaaran blood, by the look of him, and if the barbarian leathers were any indication, he more than likely had just come off the plains. The last was a pale, pudgy, nondescript sort of character, the kind Theo used to see a lot back west—definitely not a local.

“Be that as it may, I am the new recruitment officer of this organization, owing to a recent change in leadership. My name is Theodenes. Learn it well!”

The blond sailor cracked a smile. Theo snapped his fingers, and one of the Seaguard loomed from out of the shadows. The blond sailor instantly regretted it.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean—”

“Cletus,” said Theodenes. “This one isn’t going to work out.”

The Seaguard dragged the blond sailor from the room by another door. The two remaining recruits looked terrified.

“You,” asked Theo, pointing at the Nordmaaran. “What skills can you bring this organization?”

“I rode with the Quetzal Raiders in the War, under Tlaloc of the Blade,” said the Nordmaaran. “I slew twenty men. I tracked a manticore in the hills alone and brought it down. I climbed Mount Brego with my
brothers to seek the oracles and brought wisdom back to my chieftain. I—”

Theo waved his cigar. “All very exciting,” he said, “but not what we’re looking for.”

Cletus had stepped back into the room. Theo looked in his direction. “Cletus, this one’s not working out either.”

The Nordmaaran raised his hands. “I’ll see myself out.”

“An excellent decision.” Theo nodded. He looked at the third and final recruit. “You there. Solamnic, I take it?”

“Yes, sir. From the Solanthus area.”

“Marketable skills?”

The pudgy Solamnic cleared his throat. “Two seasons with the Third Crown Infantry, and one with the Eighth Sword Lancers.”

Theodenes frowned. “Never heard of them.”

“Not very active in these parts, sir.”

“Well, I don’t really need any more retired Solamnic soldiers. Can you do anything else?”

“Well, I …”

“How about cooking?”

The man coughed. “Cooking? Why, yes, sir.”

“Really? You don’t sound so sure.”

“No, no. It takes me by surprise is all. Cook? Absolutely, sir.”

Theo looked over at Cletus and back again to the Solamnic. “Do you handle poultry, pork, lamb, venison, beef, other meats?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“How about lizard?”

The man puffed his chest out. “If I can put it into a skillet or hold it over a fire, I can cook it, sir.”

Theo grinned. “Perfect! You’re hired. I assume you know your way around a sword and spear too?”

The Solamnic nodded. “You can’t serve three tours with the Solamnic Army without knowing how to defend yourself, sir.”

“Quite right. Now.” Theodenes lifted his quill and turned to the first empty space in the ledger on the desk. “What is your name?”

There was a brief pause. The cook looked as if he hadn’t been expecting that question. “Etharion, sir. Etharion Cordaric.”

Theo thought the name sounded a little Ergothian, but then again the Solamnics were all descended from Ergothians anyway. “Welcome to the Monkey’s Ear Company, Etharion. The kitchen’s out back.”

After the Solamnic had left, Theo sent Cletus out of the room and sat alone in his cigar smoke. With a cook on board, he had a full complement. All he needed was a job that paid, and things would really get moving.

It was dangerous work, he thought. But he’d seen the best in action before, the kind of man who left a lasting impression, the kind of man who inspired imitators in the profession, the kind of man who owed a gnome several hundred steel pieces and a new saber-toothed kitten.

“Vanderjack,” said Theodenes to no one in particular.

V
anderjack watched the sun going down over the Turbidus Ocean and thought of his mother.

There were hundreds of pirate kings in the Saifhumi shanty tales, but there had never been a pirate queen like her. Ireni Erj-Ackal was born on a ship and set foot on dry land only after she had first learned to climb rigging and walk along a spar. The Saifhumi made her their queen on the morning of her twentieth birthday, in the tradition of the sea nomads; she reigned for twenty more years before Mandracore the Reaver, a half-ogre, sank four of her ships and claimed her throne.

Ireni Erj-Ackal lived out the last three years of her life in forced retirement in Sea Reach, the capital of Saifhum, watching the minotaurs slowly take over the privateering around the island and hearing about rising stars such as Melas Kar-Thon and his daughter. Her own son watched her die, leaving thirty Ergothian brass coins on the side table where her sword once lay.

Vanderjack had never been back to Saifhum, nor spent another day on a sea nomad ship. The ubiquitous
smells of patchai-ellai and curried fish sauces still made him sick to his stomach. He was no son of the sea. But he couldn’t stop gazing at it, and that meant thinking of her.

“Well?”

The sellsword’s thoughts came back to the present. Gredchen was standing there before him, and over her shoulder were the north gates of Pentar.

“Not until dark,” he said.

The baron’s aide exhaled and sat down next to him on the salt-worn rock. “Do you always walk into towns at night? They close the gates, you know.”

Vanderjack scratched his chin. “It’s the best time of the day to show up anywhere,” he said. “And besides, closing the gates in Pentar doesn’t mean anything. We’ll go down along the wharves. You can walk around there”—he pointed at the westernmost end of the fifteen-foot stone wall surrounding the port town—“into the Temple District, where the Seaguard don’t spend a lot of time, and these new priests are eager to be hospitable.”

Gredchen frowned. “Waiting here means Annaud’s men are going to catch up to us. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I certainly hope you do, for the baron’s sake. He’s paying you a lot of steel to sit around and wait until the sun goes down.”

Vanderjack and Gredchen did just that for another hour until the sellsword was sure there wasn’t any more light other than the slivers of the red and silver moons hanging above. Only then did he get up, stretch his legs, pick up his pack, and head toward the waterfront.

Pentar made its living as a trade port. During the
war, it had been occupied by the red dragonarmy, liberated by the Whitestone forces from Kalaman, then abandoned to its fate. That suited the Pentari folk just fine. It wasn’t the melting pot that Palanthas or even Kalaman were. It wasn’t a haven for pirates or wealthy merchants either. What it was, and had been for more than a hundred and fifty years, was home to a thriving import business. The red dragonarmy made heavy use of that business, even four years after they had been kicked out.

Such constant trade meant that the town was full of hired help or those who wanted to be hired. If you weren’t a vendor or a sailor or a priest, you were a hireling, and that was exactly what Vanderjack wanted.