Forgotten Realms - [Double Diamond Triangle Saga 03] - The Mercenaries Read online

  “He’s killed people,” Anvil put in, “lots of them, I’d say. And he’s gotten very good at it.”

  Rings lifted a finger from the bowl in his hands and put it to his lips. “He didn’t have the same soup as the rest of us, mind,” he said grimly, “whatever he told us.”

  “Maybe he was part of Redbeard’s crew,” the deep voice of Kurthe said, out of the darkness along the rail. His eyes glowed like two red flames; Ingrar stared at him, wondering why he’d never noticed that before.

  The others shifted aside to let the big Konigheimer into their circle. Ingrar glanced around quickly; they weren’t acting as if anything about the big man was odd.

  “He fled mighty fast from Tharkar,” Kurthe continued, hooking two thick thumbs into his belt, “and with pains to keep quiet, too. And he seemed to know a ship’d be following us. It could be he did his captain out of some of Ralingor’s loot—a treasure map, say, or a logbook—and made a run for it, hiring us to swing swords for him and die, if Redbeard ever catches up with him.”

  “But Blackfingers never—” Sharessa protested, and then fell silent, as Kurthe’s familiar arm went around her hip. His fingers lingered, as they always did, on the little ridge there, that marked the top of the old sword-scar that ran down across her belly like a restless white snake.

  What had they really known of Ralingor’s wealth? He was always laughing and drinking cellars-full of good wine, and spending coins by the fistful… but where had he kept it hidden, and how much could any man have left, after pouring it away by night and day the way Blackfingers had?

  In shared silence the Sharkers considered Kurthe’s all-too-likely scenario… and the silence lengthened as the implications sank in. And brought on chills.

  “He’d make a good pirate captain,” Anvil said. “But not one you could ever relax around. He’s too—dangerous.”

  “Aye, I want to trust him,” Belgin agreed, “but—”

  “Trust,” Kurthe echoed, twisting his lips to make the word a curse. “He wanted us to trust him—and men who bleat about trust, as far as I’ve ever seen, just do it to make you down shield as they drift close enough to drive a blade into you.”

  “So why’d you want to become a pirate?” Rings asked merrily.

  Kurthe just snarled at him wordlessly, and stumped away.

  “Not much laughter there,” Brindra murmured. “Mayhap—”

  Whatever she might have speculated was lost and forgotten before it was said. At that moment tattered black clouds drifted away from the moon, and in the sudden blue-white brilliance everyone on board clearly saw the black ship that had attacked them earlier, scudding along astern and off to the north.

  The sailors of that dark vessel obviously saw the Morning Bird too. It immediately heeled over and turned toward them, extra sails rippling as they were unfurled.

  The Sharkers erupted in heartfelt curses. “We’d better find Belmer,” said Sharessa, “and get our orders before it’s too late to be doing anything but dancing with skeletons again!”

  “Keep low, ignore any firepots and the like, but try to roll those bone balls overboard before the skeletons rise up,” came a crisp voice from overhead. The Sharkers stared up at the man in the rigging. How had he returned, without their seeing him? Had he been there all along, listening to Kurthe?

  Moonlight touched Belmer, and they saw that his face was hard as he stared at the onrushing black ship. He indulged in no curses, but burst into sudden movement again, swinging down to sprint away across the deck without another word. Sharessa stared after him and shook her head, but by her elbow Rings said, “Ye heard the man! Along the rail, swords out, crouch low, hang onto the ropes, and wait. I never did think ye tall folk were very smart, standing around on moon-drenched decks practising being targets!”

  “All right, all right, clevertongue,” Anvil said. “You can lead the charge onto the decks of the foe when they try to board us!”

  “A charge of whom?” Sharessa demanded, looking around. “There aren’t enough of us to give half a dozen good blades more than a few breaths of sword practice!”

  “Ah, but we have a weapon few of them can hope to prevail against!” Belgin told her. “Belmer.”

  “Ye gods!” Sharessa said, rolling her eyes. “He’s a fat man who’s hired us because his tricks’ll only take him so far, not some hero to be worshiped!”

  As she spoke, the ship beneath their boots seemed to shudder slightly, and eerie green light flashed up through all the hatches.

  Chapter 6

  Rising Faceless From the Deeps

  The Sharkers exchanged startled glances as the strange glow came again, flickering violently.

  Rings peered at the fast-approaching black ship, and so he was the last on board the Morning Bird to see it, as the very air around them began to glow, and swirl, and turn green.

  One of the Tharkarans cried out in fear. The pirates heard the smack of an open hand crashing into flesh, followed by Kurthe’s snarl of exasperation, and the thumps of the sailor’s body slumping to the deck. In the silence that followed, the air slowly brightened, until the night around them was gone, and their world had become an unbroken dome of swirling, glowing mists.

  “Make ready,” Anvil said tensely. “A little mist isn’t going to stop that foe from ramming us—and at the speed it was making, that’ll come soon.”

  “Why doesn’t Belmer have those dolts back there turn us again?” Belgin asked angrily. “We’re practically holding our side out to be hit!” He clenched his fists in exasperation, and started to pace. “Why, if he was here right now, I’d tell him soon enough—”

  A hatch cover under his boots suddenly rose, spilling the sharper abruptly into the rail, and Belmer’s head came into view. He looked up at the mists and nodded, as if satisfied.

  Belgin seemed to have changed his mind about telling their employer anything, so it was Rings who asked, “Hadn’t we better change course or do something to keep them from ramming?”

  “I’ve done what was necessary,” Belmer replied, just a trifle sharply.

  “How did you bring on the mists?” Sharessa asked. “You hadn’t time to cast any spell!”

  Belmer shrugged. “I had time to let loose a magic I paid someone else dearly for,” he told her. “I’d hoped not to have to use it quite so soon, but…”

  “We’re somewhere slightly different from where we were before you called up the mists,” Sharessa said slowly, “aren’t we?”

  Belmer nodded slowly.

  “So,” Rings asked breezily, “does any danger confront us in this—” he waved his arms at the roiling fog all around “—beside the usual mischance of running into things?”

  “Well,” Belmer said in dry tones, “there’s always that.” He pointed into the greenish mists at something large and dark.

  Another ship was drifting out of the mists to loom up over the far rail, bowsprit outstretched.

  All over the Morning Bird folk cried out. It was going to ram them, it was an ancient carrack glistening with sea slime, it was a—

  “Ghost ship!” Jander Turbalt bellowed, and his crew sent up a wail. “Ghost ship!”

  The Sharkers stared at the vessel as it ran almost gently up against the Morning Bird and lodged its bows in their midships rigging.

  A smell wafted across the decks: a charnel reek of rot and old creeping mold and dead things. The sails of the ghost ship were sagging ropes of black, glistening brine slime, and its decks were furry with seabed plants and convulsing, dying crabs, strangling on air where they’d been breathing water before. Among them strode the crew: slow, lurching sailors who wore only rotten rags. They waved the rusty stumps of cutlasses at the Sharkers in eerie silence and shambled toward the bows of their ship, seeking battle.

  Sharessa stared at them and felt her stomach rise up into her throat. They seemed to see her, but they had no eyes. Their faces were glistening white sheets of flattish, eaten-away flesh, all features long gone.

&n
bsp; The faceless pirates shuffled tirelessly toward the Morning Bird, and from its stern the Sharkers heard despairing shrieks and splashes as more of the Tharkarans, mastered by terror, sought the cold embrace of the waves.

  “This is what comes of dabbling in magic,” Kurthe growled, his face as white as fine linen.

  Rings swallowed. “I’d as soon fight off skeletons as those. Master Belmer, can ye call off the mists and rid us of this?”

  “No,” Belmer said. He looked almost dejected as he added, “This was called to us by what I unleashed. There’s no way to…”

  He paused. As the faceless zombies shuffled forward, the Sharkers moved reluctantly to form a line to face them. The fat little man suddenly whirled around and snapped, “Fight and hold them—I’ll be as swift as I can!”

  And with that he was gone again, his rotund body fairly flying across the damp decks. Sharessa felt somehow more hopeful as she stared after him.

  A shout brought her attention back to the battle at hand. Kurthe had snatched up a sailpole and was battering the faceless things as they climbed awkwardly along the bowsprit of their vessel. One of them was smashed free, to claw at the air vainly for a moment before vanishing from view into the sea. Another crawled on, its arms broken to shapeless, dangling ropes of flesh by the Konigheimer’s fear-frenzied blows.

  The other Sharkers watched in horrified fascination until Anvil swallowed and started to trudge forward across the decks, his sword held out before him as if it was a shield to ward away the oncoming horrors. Rings followed, and after a slow moment Brindra trailed along in his wake.

  Sharessa and Belgin traded looks, shrugged, and advanced in their turn, leaving only Ingrar, shivering and pale with fear.

  Trembling and retching, the lad brought up the rear, more to stay with his comrades than because he’d found any scraps of bravery. When the first of the faceless things found its footing on the decks of the Morning Bird and hacked at Kurthe with dogged, dreamlike slowness, Ingrar moaned aloud.

  The Konigheimer laid about himself with almost frenzied strength, roaring his defiance, goaded by fear and—even more—by the chance to finally lash out and hit something.

  The end of the stout sailpole splintered under the force of his blows, but the half-pulped zombies staggered on, passing him in a slow, tireless flood.

  Anvil muttered a prayer to Tempus and another to Tymora as the first faceless one reached him. Then he swung his sword with all his strength, in a blow that half separated that featureless head from its shoulders.

  The undead thing staggered, slid free of his blade, and without pause or any evidence of pain swung around to drive the crumbling fragments of its blade into his ribs. Anvil twisted away to make the blade slice away from his body—and it did not even manage that, falling away in flakes where a real blade would have sheared into the leather covering Anvil’s flank.

  The pirate did not wait to give it another chance. He grabbed his foe’s sword arm behind the elbow and shoved, turning the thing completely away from him, into the path of the next zombie. The two dripping things bumped and struggled, and then crashed to the deck together as Kurthe smashed them both at neck level, and Anvil ducked in to hamstring them at knee level.

  Even as the zombies fell and rolled, still dangerous, others shuffled forward to take their places. Sharessa and Brindra, white to the lips, were hacking and tumbling like women possessed; their usual tactics of fencing or causing pain were useless against these smothering, unfeeling foes. In a moment or two more they’d be overwhelmed and clubbed down.

  Rings spat a curse as he ducked away from a vicious hacking blow, slipped, and had to leap for his life. The sight of his closest friend in danger seemed to goad Ingrar out of his fear-daze. With a scream of defiance the pale, sweating youth charged forward, hacking and slashing like a man trying to hew down a tree, driving the zombies back into a huddled mass.

  With a wolfish grin, Kurthe swung his sailpole, and battered almost half of the undead into the sea. Packed together, they could do little more than squirm as the Sharkers rose against them in unison, cutting and disabling them, and trying to keep clear of the grabbing, thrusting faceless creatures who’d already been cut down to the deck and were now crawling about underfoot like white, glistening dew worms.

  Then a ringing voice made them all turn their heads.

  “Great Umberlee, hear me! Great Queen of the Sea, heed this fervent supplication! Too long have we forsaken your true way, in our times far from the sea! Yet we return, and can never forget you! You, who rule all the watery face of Faerûn, and keep more secrets than any other! You, who quell storms and raise them with but a thought! You, whose greatness we cannot hope to comprehend! Yet we cry unto you in our time of need, and make what humble offerings we can! Take, now, all the gold this ship carries, every last piece of it—and all the glistering gems, too! More than the weight of a man—yours, if you but take back your faithful guardians, to rest once more upon the bottom and await other intruders! Hear me, Great Umberlee! Accept now this offering, I pray!”

  It was Belmer, splashing himself with seawater all the while he spoke, and waving a green stone hammer whose sculpted head was split into two curling waves. At his final words he brought the hammer down hard on a sea chest, shattering it, and hurled the pieces over the side of the ship. Then he hefted the chest—though it was almost as large as he was—without apparent effort, and hurled it into the sea.

  Water fountained up in a mighty crash—more than such a weight should have disturbed—and the Sharkers traded looks. All the gold aboard? Had he emptied their pockets and carry-chests, too?

  Well, not their pockets, they soon made sure, slapping at purses and coin belts as they backed away from the suddenly shuddering zombies. The sea had grown suddenly still, and a strange, deep singing was coming from beneath the ship, rising all around them.

  Belmer’s prayer, it seemed, had been heard. The little man was bent over the rail now, chanting the name of the goddess of the sea over and over, in a ceaseless drone that rose and fell like the passing waves.

  Abruptly the zombies turned away from the living pirates and surged back toward their own ship, heedless of how many of them were crowded aside into the sea as they swarmed back up the bowsprit of the ghost ship.

  A taut rope hummed and then broke, writhing across the decks of the Morning Bird. The forespar of the dripping ship of the deeps was moving again, backing out of the tangle it had created by ploughing into the rigging. The zombies moved more quickly now, withdrawing with little of the stiffness and awkwardness of their first waterlogged movements. Their eerie ship seemed to draw them with it, receding into the roiling mists.

  It was sinking as it went, sliding back into the embrace of the waters that had held it for long years. As the Sharkers watched in awe and grim fear, wild bubblings began around the vanishing hull, and the drab sponges and waterweeds on its decks submerged again.

  “Sweeps!” Belmer snapped, breaking the somber, fascinated mood of the watching pirates. “Sharkers, man the sweeps! I need this ship held back from that wreck! It’ll suck as it goes down and could scrape us open! Move!”

  Kurthe looked sullen, and set down his sailpole slowly, but his companions hastened. The danger was real, and a master was spitting orders.

  With an almost human groan, the ghost ship slid entirely under the mist-cloaked water and was gone. Its descent drew the Morning Bird toward it, and the Sharkers put in some anxious, sweating moments of rowing with the giant sweeps to keep clear of the faceless white heads of the last, stolid zombies, and the broken-off mast spars between them.

  At the rail Belmer straightened, but it seemed Umberlee was not done with them quite yet. A wave rose from the calm sea with easy grace and swept across the decks like a long tongue reaching in across a sand beach. It washed away every last rust-flaked hilt and zombie finger, leaving behind a single shell as large as a man’s fist.

  Belmer strode toward this sea prize, but Kurthe, seeing
his interest, snatched it up and put it to his ear.

  The endless roar and crash of distant waves upon rocks seemed to echo faintly through his head, and then gave birth to a breathy voice. “Trust not what you see,” it said, and then fell silent. Kurthe lifted his head to see Belmer standing over him with hand outstretched for the shell. He gave his employer a black look.

  “Give,” Belmer said simply, his face expressionless.

  After a long, silent moment, Kurthe slapped the shell into the little man’s palm, rose, and stalked away without looking back.

  Belmer swept the shell swiftly to his ear, listened for a long, motionless moment, and then drew the shell slowly down again as he stared at Kurthe’s retreating back. “Rings,” he asked gently, without turning his head, “would you be so good as to bring Kurthe down to the cabin you share, as soon as it’s convenient?”

  The dwarf gave their employer a frowning look, and then trundled off in the Konigheimer’s wake with a muttered “Aye.”

  “Is this… going to be a meeting between you two that we should know more about?” Anvil asked casually, his tone not quite menacing.

  Belmer turned his head and gave them all a mirthless smile. “No. It’s a meeting between us all that I should have held earlier. Some things need to be said—and overheard by the right ears.”

  Ignoring the puzzled looks of the Sharkers, the fat little man indicated the nearest companionway leading below, and asked politely, “Shall we?”

  “The mists are clearing,” Brindra said suddenly. “Shouldn’t we be worried about the black ship coming to call again?”

  “Not if we move quickly,” Belmer replied, and swept past her to bound down the worn stairs. Exchanging glances, the Sharkers followed. What was the little man up to this time?