The small figure in the gray traveling cloak leaned low against the rain as he slowly walked his dark bay pony toward the distant gates of the City of Sails. Spider hadn’t looked back over the miles of road since he had split with the Grinning Ponies, with Doregardo taking the band back to their usual haunts in the south. His road lay before him now, he continually reminded himself, resisting the urge to turn around and ride hard to catch up with his fellow riders.
So much had he left behind him in the years of this young second life … friends, including a very special one in Delthuntle, friends along the Trade Way … He would see them all again, he vowed. But now his road lay before him, not behind.
“Speak your name and your business!” a guard called down from a squat tower beside Luskan’s closed southern gate.
The halfling looked up and pulled the hood of his cloak back, revealing his blue beret, which he wore slightly off kilter to the left and now fastened flat in the front with a golden button shaped like a running pony. His curly brown hair, wet with drizzle, hung to his shoulders and he had grown a thin mustache and a goathat playthings we be,”, I all the louderes10ee that was little more than a line of hair from his bottom lip to the middle of his chin, so similar to the one his mentor, Pericolo Topolino, had worn.
“Spider Topolino,” he replied without hesitation, without even the urge to call himself Regis, a name he had long abandoned, “who rode with Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies.”
The guard’s eyes widened at that, just for a moment, and he looked back and whispered to someone unseen behind him.
“Never heard of them,” he said, turning back to Spider.
The halfling vigilante shrugged, hardly believing the man and hardly caring.
“And your business?” the guard demanded.
“Passing through,” said Spider, “to the north. I’ve family in Lonelywood, in Ten-Towns. The last caravans of the season will be leaving soon, I expect.” From his past life, he knew the schedule here well enough to know that he was speaking the truth, for the eighth month, Eliasis, of 1483 had just begun, and the pass through the Spine of the World was often closed by snows before the end of the ninth month. He should have come to Luskan a couple of tendays earlier, perhaps, but leaving the Grinning Ponies had proven a difficult thing. He had left two full lives behind, both that he had come to love, and now approached a third existence, and one he could only hope would prove no less full of such love and friendship.
“And you’ve the gold to get a caravan to carry you?” the guard asked, a bit too slyly for Spider’s liking.
“Since I wish to travel north in any case, it is my expectation that the merchants will have the gold to afford my company,” Spider answered.
The guard gave him a skeptical look.
“Pray open your gate,” Spider said. “This rain has gone to the bone, I fear, and I would dearly love to find a warm hearth and a fine meal before retiring.”
The guard hesitated and looked down on him from above. The halfling sat up straighter and loosened his cloak a bit, shifting his left arm so that the covering fell back behind his hip, thus revealing his rapier in all its bejeweled glory. Clever Spider made sure to turn his pony a bit to the right to afford the guard a good view.
The man finally glanced back and said something Spider could not hear, and the gates began to creak open soon after.
Spider Pericolo Topolino sat up very straight as he walked his pony through, his cloak off his left shoulder, his left arm hanging easily at his side while he guided his mount with his right hand alone. He tried to project an air of confidence-competence was the best deterrent against would-be robbers and murderers, after all.
As far as he could tell at first blush, and from the information he had garnered over the last months riding in the south, the city had changed very much for the worse in the century since he’d last been here. Luskan was still ruled by five High Captains and their respective “Ships,” pirates and cutthroats all, and thoroughly unpleasant sorts. She was a city of scurvy vagabonds, where a body lying on the side of the road was not an uncommon sight.
Spider could see the masts of the many boats in the harbor over to his left. Most would be sailing for the south soon enough, likely, and so their crews might be willing to take greater risks within Luskan, figuring that they would be out of port before the magistrates could catch up!” Bruenor warned.5N3 the kingon to them.
With that thought in mind, Spider moved along the right-hand, eastern lanes, the inland sections, staying in sight of the eastern wall as he made his way toward the city’s northern gate. Much of Luskan lay in ruins now, and when he came in sight of the Upstream Span crossing the River Mirar to the city’s north gate, he saw that the bridges, too, were in heavy disrepair, so much so that he had to wonder if caravans even left from Luskan any longer, bound across the river to the north.
One compound on the riverbank just south of the Upstream Span caught his eye, and he breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Baliver’s House of Horses was still, apparently, in operation. He walked his pony over to where a pair of young men and a woman loaded hay into the back of a wagon.
“Well met,” he greeted, dismounting, and he was glad to see the three smiling-and was surprised at how much a little thing like a smile could brighten up this thoroughly miserable ruin posing as a city.
“And to you, goodsir,” said the young woman, a handsome lass of less than twenty years. “Stabling or renting, or both, perhaps?”
“Stabling,” Regis replied, and he handed the reins to one of the men who came forward. “Name’s Rumble, or Rumblebelly to his friends. Handle him well, I beg. He’s been a good and loyal pony.” He pulled his saddlebags from Rumble’s back and flipped them over his shoulder, then dug into his pouch. “Three silver a night?” he asked and offered.
“Aye, that’ll do.”
“Then here’s a tenday, though I doubt I’ll be in town that long, and a bit of extra for special care to my always hungry pony.” He handed the young man four pieces of gold. “And a bit more when I collect him,” he added as the happy man led Rumble away.
“I’ll need to find an inn, and a caravan to Icewind Dale,” Regis added, turning back to the woman. He looked to the north, to the structures along the northern bank, and pointed. “Is the Red Dragon Trading Post still in operation?”
It was clear that they had no idea what he was talking about.
“Might mean One-Eyed Jax,” the remaining young man remarked.
“There is a tavern over on the north bank,” the woman explained. “Comfortable enough, so I’ve heard.”
“He’d be better sleeping in our hayloft,” said the man. “Well, which is it?” Regis demanded.
“Comfortable,” the woman replied. “And the place you’d best find any news of caravans to the North, surely, but …” She looked to her doubting companion.
“I see you wear a sword,” he said. “Can you use it?”
“Will I have to?”
The young man just shrugged.
“It’s the safest place and bed he’ll find,” the woman told her companion, and she turned to Spider. “Drow are not uncommon about One-Eyed Jax,” she explained. “But Ship Kurth claims ownership of the place, and none in the city are about to cross Ship Kurth. One-Eyed Jax is as safe a bed as you’ll find in Luskan.”
“Not saying much,” said the man.
“I was not expecting mu a long while to realize ees Regisonch,” Regis assured him. He looked to the bridge, the Upstream Span. “Will it fall out from under my feet?”
“They are repairing it,” the man replied. “Have been since before I was born. Safe enough if you’re careful where you step, but if there’s a gang working it, they’ll ask you to reach into your purse for a toll.”
Spider of the Grinning Ponies just smiled and shook his head. That grin hid a true sorrow, though, for what might have been in once-proud Luskan. For he, Regis, had been here in 1377, when Captain Deudermont had tried to wrest control of the city from the Arcane Brotherhood and the High Captains. If Deudermont had won, Luskan might now stand as a smaller version of mighty Waterdeep, a shining jewel on a coast full of thriving ports. But alas, Deudermont had failed, and had fallen.