Under Fallen Stars (27 page)

Khlinat stared at him in consternation, backlit by the glow of their campfire.

“What’s wrong?” Pacys asked, not understanding.

“Ye were moaning and groaning,” Khlinat told him, “like a man being pulled to his grave by a pack of hungry ghouls.”

Reluctantly, Pacys sat up. In his older years, he knew sleep no longer returned so casually as it had when he was younger. Some nights sleep had to be wooed like an uncertain lover, and this night he was certain it wouldn’t return at all.

“A dream,” he told the dwarf.

” ‘Tweren’t no dream, I’ll wager,” Khlinat said. His hair hung in shaggy disarray, leaves twisted among it from sleeping on the light pallets they carried.

“A nightmare then.”

“Come over here and sit by the fire,” Khlinat entreated. “Warm up yer bones a bit and it’ll get rid of them nightmares.”

Pacys moved a little closer to the fire they kept burning to stave off the chill of the night. Khlinat threw a few more of the branches they’d gathered onto the fire. Stuttering yellow flames licked up anxiously for the dry wood.

“Maybe a bit of that stew I made earlier,” Khlinat suggested. “Get your innards warmed up a bit too.”

“No, thank you,” Pacys said. “The fire will be enough.” He held his hands out to the fire, marveling again that they were still in such good shape after all these years. He’d known several bards who’d lost their skill to arthritis or accident.

“So what was this nightmare?” the dwarf asked.

Pacys shook his head. “There were no images. At least, none that I can remember.” He hesitated. “There was a song, though, something I could barely understand.”

He reached for the yarting in its protective cover beside his pallet. Despite his age, he sat with crossed legs. He’d spent decades on the ground, on tables in taverns, on hassocks in royal chambers, and on ships’ decks. The position was natural for him.

Khlinat sat silently beside him, his hands never far from the axe hafts. The rough country had been hard on the dwarf because of his peg leg, but he’d never complained.

It was good, Pacys knew, to be in stouthearted company when the things that lay ahead appeared so uncertain. He slid the yarting from its cover, stroked the strings and tuned it briefly, then reached out for the song.

He closed his eyes, surrendering himself over to it. Since they arrived in the Gulthmere Forest the songs had stayed constantly in his thoughts, almost too many of them to keep track of, yet when he fitted them together, they wove tightly. His fingers found the notes easily, and he wasn’t surprised that some of them were new. It was like mining a mountain shot through with veins rich with ore. Despite how many new things were coming to him, he knew there was much more that was not yet his.

Eyes closed in concentration, the old bard smelled the sweet scent of Khlinat’s pipe as it smoldered. Though he hadn’t thought of it before and didn’t know why he hadn’t, Pacys reached out for the scent, felt the smooth, wispy nature of it, and blended it into the song as well.

“That’s me part,” Khlinat said in surprise.

“Yes,” Pacys told him, smiling. The music was so vibrant and true, even after hearing only brief pieces and snatches of it in the middle of so many others, the dwarf was able to remember the different verses. He cut out the other music for a moment, leaving only the notes he’d blended for the pipeweed smoke.

“Me pipe?” Khlinat asked.

Pacys smiled and opened his eyes. “You knew?”

“How could I not?” the dwarf asked. “By Marthammor Duin’s long strides, how can ye capture pipe smoke in a song? I’ve heard bards doing that for people’s voices and animals and the like, but not this.”

Pacys shook his head. “It’s as I’ve said, my friend, this song is truly meant for my hands and ear alone. I am come into my own.” The old bard’s heart trip-hammered as he recognized the truth behind the bold statement. He calmed himself through the music, playing out his excitement until he brought it to a steadier place.

The only thing that bothered him was knowing what he was supposed to do next. Narros’s story hadn’t included that. He paused in his playing, watching embers caught up in the rising smoke die only a short distance above the flames. Moonlight kissed the breakers rolling against the shoreline only a short distance away. He pulled their sound into him and made it his.

“Oghma help me,” Pacys whispered to the dwarf, “but I have never in my life felt so alive. It should be sinful to feel this good.”

“Aye,” Khlinat agreed. “But ye and me, we know the truth of life, songsmith. That every day you trod upon this earth, a bit more of ye dies. Ye soon run out of new things, new places, new people. A wandering man, that’s what I always wanted to be, but I’ve stayed in one place for far too long. This quest ye be upon, now there’s a true calling for the measure of a man. That’s part of why I wanted to tag along with ye, to sup the dregs from your adventures. Marthammor Duin willing, there’ll be no few of those.”

Pacys touched the yarting’s strings, exploring all that was new to him. “I only wish I knew better where we were supposed to go. Starmantle is the closest city of any size.”

“Ye worry too much about things that will take care of themselves,” Khlinat said. “When it’s a quest ye be following, why ye are the compass rose on the map. Ye can’t help but go in the right direction no matter how wrong it may seem at the time. Ye mark me words, songsmith, and mark them well.”

The old bard believed in his new friend’s confidence, melding it with his own, but a cold tingle touched him as well. With a sense long born of traveling and being on his own, Pacys knew they were being watched. He caught the dwarfs eye and said, “We’ve attracted attention.”

The dwarf slid one of his hand axes free and ran a thumb across the sharp blade. “I thought I felt something nosing around. Maybe 111 go take a look.”

Pacys put a hand on the little man’s arm. “No. I don’t think that will be necessary.”

A shadow stood in the forest, lean and somehow regal, part of the dark landscape, yet somehow apart from it as well. Moonlight flashed from the shiny surface of what Pacys believed to be the man’s clothing.

When the man first stepped forward and his dark skin and silver-white hair glistened wetly in the campfire light, Pacys thought they’d drawn the attention of a drow elf. The man had the easy, liquid movements all the elves exhibited. He went naked save for a harness that supported a brace of knives and shiny leggings. He carried a long-bladed spear in his right hand.

Khlinat swore fiercely and bounded to his foot, swiveling on his peg as he set himself with axes in both hands. “All right, ye blackhearted backstabber, let’s have at ye!”

XVI

As Jherek rushed the mage in the enchanted chair, the pirate behind him leaped forward and went for the sword scabbarded at his waist. He had it out before Jherek reached him.

The action attracted the ship’s mage’s attention. The man threw himself from the chair. Abandoned without a strong hand at the keel, Breezerunner listed out of true, wallowing against the river current now instead of cutting through it cleanly. The wind and sails warred with the push of the river, rocking the ship with bigger and bigger swings.

Jherek moved easily with his stolen cutlass, parrying the helmsman’s blow and listening to the yells of the pirates as they woke the ship. Still not quite back to his fighting trim, the young sailor moved too slowly to get his return blow back on time after a successful parry. The pirate blocked it inches from his face.

Swearing, calling on darkest evil to descend on Jherek, the pirate slid his steel along the young sailor’s and stepped inside his guard. Before Jherek could anticipate it, his opponent headbutted him in the face. Blood streamed from Jherek’s nose, leaking the salty taste down into his mouth, and it felt like the back of his head was exploding all over again.

Jherek staggered back, barely able to get his cutlass up in time to keep from having his leg hacked by a foul blow that he wouldn’t have tried himself. Steel rang, clear and strident.

“Get that damn rudder, Malorrie!” Captain Tynnel roared. Two pirates blocked his way up the stairs to the stern castle. He fought them with a belaying pin he’d taken from the ship’s railing. “If you don’t get control of her, Breezerunnefs going to end up as a pile of kindling on one of those riverbanks!”

Jherek knew it was true, and the thought filled him with fear. He didn’t know where Sabyna was, but he thought first of the ship’s mage. He wouldn’t allow himself to fail. He leaned into his swordcraft, pulling up all the tricks and shortcuts Malorrie had taught him.

His fever and his weakness felt like they put him a half step behind what he tried to do. Perspiration burst out on his body from his efforts, and it made the night chill ghosting across the ship’s decks even more harsh. A flurry of furious clangs sounded across the deck and the river, held in close by the overhanging trees. Breezerunner listed again, starting to come broadside into the river current. If it did, Jherek knew the ship could be lost from control forever until they ended up smashing somewhere.

Redoubling his efforts, Jherek concentrated on his foe, fighting the other man’s skill as well as the effects of the fever. Everything from the waist up was a target. The young sailor allowed himself no foul blows, fighting his battle fairly and with honor. He tried a slash of his own every fifth blow, turning aside the pirate’s frenzied attacks. His forearm and shoulder ached with the effort, then gradually warmed, responding better.

He stepped up his own pace, cutting now once for every three parries. He circled the deck, staying in close to his opponent, forcing the man to keep his blows short and not use his strength. When the man tried for the young sailor’s head, Jherek dropped to the deck. His senses reeled enough that he had to catch himself on his empty hand. He brought the cutlass around in a sideward slash under the man’s elbow that cleaved into his ribs.

The pirate yelled hoarsely, gazing down at the cutlass buried in his side. Blood spilled down his waist. Jherek locked eyes with the man, both of them knowing the mortal blow had been struck. The young sailor stepped back and pulled his cutlass free, feeling ribs grate along the sword. Holding his blade before him, he circled around the dying pirate who struggled to stay on his feet.

“By all the pirate’s blood in me, and all the blood of my forefathers before me,” the pirate croaked in a hoarse voice, “I curse you to never know peace, to never know a time when death isn’t lurking at your door.”

A chill fear raced down Jherek’s back as he moved to the stern and captured the tiller. As a seafaring man, the young sailor knew to give credence to a pirate’s curses.

Still, it wasn’t as frightening as it might have been. He already wore his father’s tattoo on his arm. “You’re too late,” he told the pirate. “I was cursed at birth by a man much more powerful than you.”

With a howl of rage, the blood loss already weakening him, the pirate rushed at Jherek and swung his blade. Jherek hauled on the rudder, trying to pull Breezerunner back to true. The ship fought him, rising and falling like a wild animal. He held the rudder in the crook of his left arm so he could put all his weight into the effort. He parried with the cutlass, standing his ground as the pirate rushed into him.

The pirate’s weight slammed Jherek back into the railing, knocking the wind from his lungs. The man clamped his free hand around the young sailor’s throat and forced him back over the railing.

“Die!” the pirate screamed, drawing his blade back. Moonlight shimmered along the length of the sword as he raised it high and readied himself to bring it down.

Shifting, Jherek shoved his sword arm under the man’s grip, hooking him solidly in a wrestling hold. He swept the man’s legs from him with a foot, twisting at the same time to lever the pirate over the railing.

The man fell with a great splash into the River Chionthar. The dark water, trimmed in whitecaps trailing after Breezerunner, sucked the man down.

“Cut the damn ship hard to starboard,” Captain Tynnel roared. “Cut her now!”

Turning back, Jherek watched as the rough and rocky riverbank on the port side came up fast on Breezerunner’s prow. Branches from the overhanging trees clawed at the rigging. Rope shrieked with the pressure, then parted with loud snaps as a cacophony of breaking branches accompanied the sounds. Limbs and leaves showered the cargo ship’s deck, while other branches ripped through the sailcloth.

Jherek dropped his cutlass and grabbed the rudder in both arms, aware of the two pirates streaking up the starboard steps leading to the stern castle. The young sailor set himself, pulling at the rudder with all his strength, getting his back against the railing. The ship, the current, and the wind all fought him, and Breezerunner twisted violently like a live thing. She crested the current, then listed wildly on the other side, throwing everyone on deck from their feet.

Hanging on fiercely, Jherek manhandled the rudder, keeping it in the river by standing up with it. Grudgingly, Breezerunner’s prow came starboard, away from the riverbank. Branches and leaves continued hitting the deck, and sections of sailcloth came spilling down. A lantern slid from the mainmast and smashed against the deck, igniting a pool of fire that whirled up in blue and yellow flames.

“Fire!” someone yelled, and Jherek didn’t know if it was ship’s crew or pirate.

The young sailor pulled hard on the rudder, knowing he couldn’t let go or he’d lose the ship. He watched the two pirates running up the steps, hoping that they’d see the danger all of them would be put in if they attacked him and knowing it was in vain.

The pirates topped the steps, rushing onto the stern castle deck and coming right at him.

Sabyna Truesail raced across Breezerunner’s main deck. She’d planned on finding Vurgrom and his wizard, thinking that she stood the best chance of interfering with the man’s spellcraft. For days she’d helplessly watched the mistreatment of the crew she’d sworn to defend and care for as ship’s mage, telling herself that biding her time was the best decision to make.