“I grow weary of the chase,” Deudermont retorted, his way of saying that he was eager to finally confront the beastly pirate he pursued.
“Less so than I,” the wizard replied.
Deudermont didn’t argue that point, and he knew that the benefit of Robillard’s magic filling the sails was mitigated by the strong following winds. In calmer seas, Sea Sprite could still rush along, propelled by the wizard and his ring, while their quarry would typically flee at a crawl. The captain clapped Micanty on the shoulder and led him to the side, in view of Sea Sprite’s new and greatly improved catapult. Heavily banded in metal strapping, the dwarven weapon could heave a larger payload. The throwing arm and basket strained under the weight of many lengths of chain, laid out for maximum extension by gunners rich in experience.
“How long?” Deudermont asked the sighting officer, who stood beside the catapult, spyglass in hand.
“We could hit her now with a ball of pitch, mighten be, but getting the chains up high enough to shred her sails…That’ll take another fifty yards closing.”
“One yard for every gust,” Deudermont said with a sigh of feigned resignation. “We need a stronger wizard.”
“You’d be looking for Elminster himself, then,” Robillard shot back. “And he’d probably burn your sails in some demented attempt at a colorful flourish. But please, hire him on. I would enjoy a holiday, and would enjoy more the sight of you swimming back to Luskan.”
This time Deudermont’s sigh was real.
So was Robillard’s grin.
Sea Sprite’s timbers creaked again, forward-leaning masts driving the prow hard against the dark water.
Soon after, everyone on the deck, even the seemingly-dispassionate wizard, waited with breath held for the barked command, “Tack starboard!”
Sea Sprite bent over in a water-swirling hard turn, bending her masts out of the way for the aft catapult to let fly. And let fly she did, the dwarven siege engine screeching and creaking, hurling several hundred pounds of wrapped metal through the air. The chains burst open to near full length as they soared, and whipped in above the deck of Quelch’s Folly, slashing her sails.
As the wounded pirate ship slowed, Sea Sprite tacked hard back to port. A flurry of activity on the pirate’s deck showed her archers preparing for the fight, and Sea Sprite’s crack crew responded in kind, aligning themselves along the port rail, composite bows in hand.
But it was Robillard who, by design, struck first. In addition to constructing the necessary spells to defend against magical attacks, the wizard used an enchanted censer and brought forth a denizen from the Elemental Plane of Air. It appeared like a waterspout, but with hints of a human form, a roiling of air powerful enough to suck up and hold water within it to better define its dimensions. Loyal and obedient because of the ring Robillard wore, the cloudlike pet all but invisibly floated over the rail of Sea Sprite and glided toward Quelch’s Folly.
Captain Deudermont lifted his hand high and looked to Robillard for guidance. “Alongside her fast and straight,” he instructed the helmsman.
“Not to rake?” Waillan Micanty asked, echoing perfectly the sentiments of the helmsman, for normally Sea Sprite would cripple her opponent and come in broadside to the pirate’s taffrail, giving Sea Sprite’s archers greater latitude and mobility.
Robillard had convinced Deudermont of a new plan for the ruffians of Quelch’s Folly, a plan more straightforward and more devastating to a crew deserving of no quarter.
Sea Sprite closed—archers on both decks lifted their bows.
“Hold for me,” Deudermont called along his line, his hand still high in the air.
More than one man on Sea Sprite’s deck rubbed his arm against his sweating face; more than one rolled eager fingers over his drawn bowstring. Deudermont was asking them to cede the initiative, to let the pirates shoot first.
Trained, seasoned, and trusting in their captain, they obliged.
And so Argus’s crew let fly…right into the suddenly howling winds of Robillard’s air elemental.
The creature rose up above the dark water and began to spin with such suddenness and velocity that by the time the arrows of Argus’s archers cleared their bows, they were soaring straight into a growing tornado, a water spout. Robillard willed the creature right to the side ofQuelch’s Folly, its winds so strong that they deterred any attempt to reload the bows.
Then, with only a few yards separating Sea Sprite from the pirate, the wizard nodded to Deudermont, who counted down from three—precisely the time Robillard needed to simply dismiss his elemental and the winds with it. Argus’s crew, mistakenly thinking the wind to be as much a defense as a deterrent to their own attacks, had barely moved for cover when the volley crossed deck to deck.
“They are good,” Arabeth remarked to Maimun as the two stared into a scrying bowl she had empowered to give them a close-up view of the distant battle. Following the barrage of arrows, a second catapult shot sent hundreds of small stones raking the deck of Quelch’s Folly. With brutal efficiency, Sea Sprite sidled up to the pirate ship, grapnels and boarding planks flying.
“It will be all but over before we get there,” Maimun said.
“Before you get there, you mean,” Arabeth said with a wink. She cast a quick spell and faded from sight. “Put up your proper pennant, elseSea Sprite sinks you beside her.”
Maimun laughed at the disembodied voice of the invisible mage and started to respond, but a flash out on the water told him that Arabeth had already created a dimensional portal to rush away.
“Up Luskan’s dock flag!” Maimun called to his crew.
Thrice Lucky was in a wonderful position, for she had no outstanding crimes or warrants against her. With a flag of Luskan’s wharf above her, stating a clear intent to side with Deudermont, she would be well-received.
And of course Maimun would side with Deudermont against Argus Retch. Though Maimun, too, was considered a “pirate” of sorts, he was nothing akin to the wretched Retch—whose last name had been taken with pride, albeit misspelled. Retch was a murderer, and took great pleasure in torturing and killing even helpless civilians.
Maimun wouldn’t abide that, and part of the reason he had agreed to take Arabeth out was to see, at long last, the downfall of the dreadful pirate. He realized he was leaning over the rail. His greatest pleasure would be crossing swords with Retch himself.
But Maimun knew Deudermont too well to believe that the battle would last that long.
“Take up a song,” the young captain, who was also a renowned bard, commanded, and his crew did just that, singing rousing praises toThrice Lucky, warning her enemies, “Beware or be swimming!”
Maimun shook his thick brown locks from his face, his light blue eyes—orbs that made him look much younger than his twenty-nine years—squinting as he measured the fast-closing distance.
Deudermont’s men were already on the deck.
Robillard found himself quickly bored. He had expected better out of Argus Retch, though he’d wondered for a long time if the man’s impressive reputation had been exaggerated by the ruthlessness of his tactics. Robillard, formerly of the Hosttower of the Arcane, had known many such men, rather ordinary in terms of conventional intelligence or prowess, but seeming above that because they were unbounded by morality.