Under Fallen Stars (8 page)

The watch guard raced to the stern to the mooring cleats. He unwound the thick hawser ropes while another man unfastened the one holding the prow. Sailcloth cracked as it ran up the masts and filled with wind. The watch members threw themselves back at their ship and clambered aboard. The ship’s crew quickly passed out lanterns, lighting their ship.

Jherek stood by and watched, feeling at a loss that he wasn’t able to join the coming battle. If it came to that, he amended. He felt his sword already in his hand, though, hard and sturdy.

Khlinat thumped up beside him, his breath ragged from the effort. He carried two hand axes and scowled at the approaching line of ships. “Yonder blows an ill wind, I’ll wager.”

Jherek didn’t disagree.

“At least them’s good, honest pirates and not them scaled, blackhearted devils what’s got the taste for man flesh.”

IV

Glancing around the harbor, Jherek saw that most everyone nearby had spotted the black-sailed cargo ships. The vessels still ran dark, carrying no lanterns at all.

“Gives a man the shivers,” Khlinat said, “them running in the black. Heard stories of the seas giving up their dead upon occasion, lifting ships up from the bottom and crewing them with corpses out to sacrifice them to dark gods thought long lost.”

A crowd started to gather along the dock. Men brandished weapons. At the far end of the dock on the eastern side a barge towed across the huge chain that was used to block the harbor against unwelcome ship traffic. The massive links glinted in the moonlight and torchlight as they twisted and trailed through the water.

Even as the barge got the chain up across the mouth of the harbor and the watch ships closed on the black-sailed vessels, a gray cloud gathered suddenly and scudded in from the west like a heavy, fast-moving fog. The mass whirled and turned outward, continuing to spread as it came.

Jherek had seen plenty of fogs roll in from the sea while he’d lived in Velen, and he was certain this was no ordinary one. Before he could voice a warning, the sky exploded into harsh yellow flames that raced outward and dropped in sheets onto many of the ships in the harbor.

As the barge carrying the heavy harbor chain was about to reach the Seatower, a giant moray eel erupted from the water. Lantern light from the watch members aboard the barge illuminated the great creature. Nearly twenty feet long, though most of its body remained below the waterline, the moray eel was covered in thick, mottled, brown, leathery skin. Lighter spots showed along the broad chin under a mouthful of wicked incisors that overlapped its upper and lower lips in a cruel, merciless grin.

Despite its unexpected arrival, the moray eel still moved slowly. The watch members had a chance to ready their swords and get a few blows in as it lunged forward. The great jaws gaped open and seized a man’s head and shoulders. Continuing its forward lunge, the moray eel overturned the barge then dived back below the surface with its prize.

Men flew into the water from the overturned barge. Some disappeared immediately beneath the black water. Others tried to swim but didn’t get far as jaws or claws seized them and savagely yanked them under. Several screams drowned out in horrified gurgles.

Hoarse warning shouts rose all along the docks, but Jherek knew it was too little, too late. The invaders were even now closing the distance on the docks.

The sky flared again, spreading fire over the harbor. Some of it fell onto ships and set the sailcloth, rigging, and decks ablaze. More pools of fire fell into the harbor and floated on the water. A cluster of flames hit a small knot of people only ten feet from Jherek and fed on them greedily. Bystanders tried to beat out the flames but appeared to have little effect. Men died screaming in agony.

“Damned magery,” Khlinat yelped, covering his face with one arm.

Another patch of flames hit the dock so close to Jherek that he felt the heat. He’d caught sight of the flames plummeting toward them out of his peripheral vision and shouted a warning. Khlinat had no problem getting out of the way, but the flames splashed across the lamp boy and caught his breeches on fire.

Panicked, the boy started to run back down the dock but the air only fed the flames. The deadly wreath climbed his pants.

Moving quickly, Jherek caught the boy, wrapping one arm around the youth. Wheeling, he threw both of them over the dock’s side, making sure they had the necessary distance from the pilings.

They hit the water and went under. The dark water took only a moment to extinguish the flames that fought against the dousing brine. Jherek kept hold of the boy in case he couldn’t swim. Still holding onto his sword, the young sailor kicked them back toward the surface.

Jherek whipped his head, slinging the water and hair out of his eyes. “Are you all right, boy?”

“Yes. I think so.” His voice quivered.

Glancing up at the docks, Jherek watched the foggy cloud breaking up. The damage to the docks was already extensive, and the fires weren’t being put out very quickly. The boy struggled in his grasp, pulling at his legs.

“Are you burned?” Jherek asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“If I let you go, can you swim?”

“Like a duck,” the lamp boy promised.

Jherek let him go, watching for a moment as the boy kicked away and swam in a crude dog paddle that seemed serviceable enough.

The boy turned around, his face going pale and even more frightened. “Behind you!”

Jherek tried to turn, feeling the malignant darkness behind him as well as the water rippling against his back. Before he could do more than start the motion, he felt the scaly sahuagin arm snake around his neck and drag him under the water.

Even as he went down, Jherek heard a familiar roar that triggered a wash of fear that filled him. The loud scream of anger and challenge was artificial, but it sounded enough like a bunyip that there could be no mistake. The hoarse roar told him one of the black-sailed ships carried his father, Bloody Falkane, one of the most feared and vicious of the cold-blooded pirates of the Nelanther Isles.

Fear ran through the young sailor, not of the sahuagin who held him, but of the man who’d sired him. He bore his father’s mark on his arm, indelibly put there with magic and ink, and carried the cursed fate that resulted from his father’s sins.

The bunyip scream sounded again as the thickly muscled arm tightened around Jherek’s neck and pulled him farther down.

Laaqueel tried in vain to shut out the keening roar of the bunyip. The malenti priestess stood in the stern of Bent Tankard, the cog the sahuagin had taken only two days ago under their new king’s orders.

Wind whipped through the rigging and the sailcloth fluttered as the captain called out orders to his trimming crew while still others prepared to board the watch ships that had come to intercept them.

A few of the sahuagin weren’t completely unversed in handling surface ships. They’d taken some and used them as decoys to attack other ships in the past.

The bunyip roar blared again.

Glancing across the distance separating them from the lead ship, Laaqueel made out Bloody Falkane’s tall frame striding across the deck. The pirate captain was a striking man, tall and slender but packed with wiry muscle. Even now his oiled black hair was neatly combed back. He wore a mustache and goatee. Moonlight glinted from the silver hoop earrings he wore in both ears, as well as the other bits of jewelry. He wore a silk shirt of darkest blue and black breeches tucked into rolled boots that matched his shirt.

Laaqueel knew the bunyip roar came from a device Falkane had ordered made and carried on his own ship. The bunyip was a freshwater creature that was at first glance very sharklike in appearance, but the shaggy black hair that covered its body and the long, flowing mane set it apart.

The malenti didn’t know why the pirate had chosen the bunyip as his standard, except for the keening roar that instilled fear into most people who heard it.

She watched the fires scattered around the harbor spread only slightly. Baldur’s Gate was constructed mostly of stone and usually stayed damp because of the climate. This city wouldn’t burn as Waterdeep had, but it had less chance of standing.

The cog slid into the harbor, following Bloody Falkane’s craft. Six other ships, all loaded with pirates from the Nelanther Isles, followed them. The deck didn’t pitch much, but the movement was still foreign to her after spending nearly all her life working with the sea’s currents instead of against them.

Sudden lightning flashed from the harbor, racing in a horizontal line until it touched the mainmast of Falkane’s cog. Wood splintered with a thunderous crack and embers blew up in a flurry from the wood. Sheared, the mainmast started to topple toward the deck, then got caught up in the rigging and sailcloth.

“Cut that damned mast free!” Falkane roared, rushing up to the stern castle himself.

Sailors moved quickly to do his bidding, clambering into the rigging with long knives in their teeth. Leaping from the stern castle, the pirate captain caught hold of the rigging and climbed through it with the agility of a monkey.

Despite all the truly monstrous things Laaqueel had heard about Bloody Falkane, she had to admit the man was good at his chosen profession. She watched him hack at the rigging holding the mainmast, calling out directions to his crew. In seconds, the tall mast started toppling over the side, its descent controlled by the rigging the pirates cut expertly so that it didn’t land on the deck.

An arrow thudded solidly into the railing, missing Laaqueel’s hand by inches and drawing her attention back to her own affairs. She drew up the heavy sahuagin crossbow she held and sighted on the boatload of Baldur’s Gate defenders bearing down on the ship she was on.

Carved out of whalebone and strung with braided gut, the weapon was cable of firing above or below the water. She gazed down the greenish-gray quarrel shaft that had been chipped from claw coral that grew in hard, straight lengths. Hard as the bronze the surface worlders used, it was also razor sharp even on the sides. The hollowed shark’s tooth serving as the arrowhead was filled with poison and was designed to break off inside a target. Even if the sharp quarrel didn’t hit a killing spot, the poison ensured the kill.

With the approaching boat less than thirty feet out, Laaqueel fired the crossbow. The quarrel flashed forward and filled a man’s eyesocket. He screamed and went down, brushing at the blood gushing onto his face. When poison stilled his heart, his companions had to shove his dead , weight from them.

“To me!” Laaqueel cried to the sahuagin behind her.

They bounded forward at once. Only a few of them had crossbows. The claw coral quarrels embedded in the boat and the men, snapped off in shields, breaking the staggered ranks the defenders of Baldur’s Gate had tried to form.

Laaqueel had enough time to reload and get one more shot off, striking a man and piercing his leather armor. The impact of the quarrel twisted him sideways and threw him from the boat. Instantly, a dorsal fin cut the water, zooming toward the flailing swimmer. The malenti priestess didn’t know if the poison or the shark got the man first.

The boats collided with a shattering thump that brought the smaller one up out of the water. Some of the men were already in motion. They stabbed spears upward, tangling the sahuagin tridents.

Braced as she was and expecting the collision, Laaqueel nearly fell. She regained her footing with difficulty and tossed the crossbow aside. She also loosened the thigh quiver of quarrels and kicked it away. Taking her trident up, she turned to face the invaders.

One of the other pirate ships raced past. The archers aboard unleashed a brief volley at the men in the watch boat. Then it went on by, closing on the harbor. Even at eight ships, the pirates weren’t strong enough to take apart the defenses of Baldur’s Gate, but they weren’t alone. Iakhovas’s magery had seen to that.

Rubbery ropes of arms shot up from the water without warning, wrapped around the watch ship, and yanked it almost to a full stop. Men tumbled from the ship, pitched clear by the unexpected seizure. A mast-mounted lantern smashed against the ship’s deck and splashed a long blaze of fire that ate into the wood. Before the ship’s crew recovered, sahuagin surfaced and slit their throats with long claws. Most of the crew died without a chance to defend themselves.

On the docks, sahuagin slithered up from the port and ripped into the citizens gripped in the thrall of fear. In seconds they were walking over corpses, hunting out fresh kills. Their fierce cries of bloodlust and savage joy rang through the alleys of Baldur’s Gate and over the port. Men raced forward trying to protect loved ones or friends, and died as sahuagin tridents knifed through their stomachs or ripped through their lungs. Other sahuagin threw fishhook-embedded nets over small groups, then pulled them into the water and beneath the surface to drown them like rats. Even as Laaqueel faced the men trying to swarm up the cog, the malenti was aware of the dozen or more giant crayfish that surfaced near the west docks around the Seatower and wreaked havoc among the Flaming Fist ships that tried to put out into the harbor. It was the mercenaries of the Flaming Fist who ran Baldur’s Gate, and they were coming to the aid of the watch.

Fully eight feet long and equipped with huge pincers nearly a yard in length, the crayfish plucked men from the docks and the ships. Their hard, mottled brown, chitinous carapaces stood against sword blade, arrow, and spear. Their huge antennae whipped the air in a frenzy. The great pincers cut into their victims, sometimes sawing them in half. Other creatures Iakhovas controlled through arcane means swam beneath the river, working with the sahuagin to take the harbor.

Holding the trident in both hands, Laaqueel thrust the tines into a man’s face, forcing him back off the side of the cog. Blood spilled across the deck from the man she wounded as well as sahuagin and other surface dwellers. The planks grew slippery.

A large man in chain mail armor and a thick helmet heaved himself over the railing. Scars decorated his arms and face. He carried a huge warhammer in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other. He scowled at the sahuagin, fixing his hateful gaze on Laaqueel.