The Mercenaries

Chapter 1

Red flames danced and curled like hungry serpents, hissing as some fool tossed the dregs of his tankard their way. They spat and threw smoke and then blazed up again in the smoky hearth that dominated one end of the taproom. The infamous Tavern of the Masques was crowded to the very walls this night, for it was the favorite refuge of the lawless wolves of the sea who called Tharkar their home port.

The city was a place of tight shutters and few torches, nestled in the mountains where Ulgarth and Parsanic meet and together run down into rocky, treacherous seas. Had a sober man been outside in the damp, dark night to raise a lantern and peer at the signboard above the main doors, he'd have seen the words Donder's Dancing Masques on a swirling banner carved beneath four linked black masques-but he'd have found no one in all Tharkar who still remembered Donder. The Masques was where nearly everyone in town came to drink and wench and boast and squabble-or they cowered well clear of it, especially on nights when ships without lamps or charter-papers came in.

Four such ships were creaking at the wharves of Tharkar this night, and not far away, the sprawling bulk of the tavern, in its field of tallgrass, was bulging with thirsty, sweating, heartily belligerent pirates. Inside the heat was intense, the tumult of roaring voices was deafening, and even the burly, battle-scarred guards at the doors and weapon-check rooms looked a little overwhelmed. They'd be calling in the Daggers before this night was through.

A guest had to shoulder and shove to travel three paces, and the doors of the kitchens stood open to let out the steam. The only clothing the cooks wore was tied around their brows, to keep stinging sweat from streaming into their eyes. One man silently watched those glistening bodies wrestle food over drums of hot spiced fat and wine-sluiced chopping boards. He sniffed the air. Around him the pungent, competing reeks of a dozen pipe-mixes mingled with the smells of sizzling stuffed boar, roast almonds, mushrooms fried in herbed butter, stagshead soup, and fowl doused in wine.

The sailors were ravenous. Seaports were the only places some could get more than drink, thin soup, and gnaw-fists of hardbread or salted fish. Right now most of them were doing their level best to take aboard all their guts could hold-and often more-before the club-wielding "lammers" of the house dragged or frog-i marched them out into the dark, cool fields, where they'd be left to lie snoring or moaning until morning.

The copper-topped bar was a crowded forest of tankards and strange bottles from distant, exotic ports, their vintners and brewers either unknown or legendary. More than a few beverages had been so doctored with dyes and sugar-powders by gentle hands behind the bar that their makers wouldn't have recognized them. It didn't matter; the guests were thirsty, and anything that could be opened and poured down a throat would serve. Tankards were being taken out to the tables in crates to avoid spillage in the crowd of laughing, shouting men-and the burly men carrying them were already looking wet and weary.

Ladies who wore only thin leather strips strung with tiny chiming bells swung platters of food from table to table with practiced ease, slapping at some sailors and stopping to dance or bestow kisses when coins were stuffed into their leg-bags. One of them didn't have to slap; she wore only the reeking, draped seaweed of a priestess of Umberlee, goddess of the sea-and men carefully left her alone.

She slipped through the tumult like a dark shadow, as pirates laughed and told wild stories and slapped each other and the tables with mirth-and in one dark corner by the fire a fat little man sat alone at a table. In the reflective surface of a brightly polished tankard, he watched it all. The heat thrown off by the hearth kept most of the weaving pirates from lingering in his corner. From time to time his dark, glistening eyes went to a door nearby, but mostly he looked around the room, keeping his head lowered so his jet black hair hooded his searching gaze, and listened.

The tall tankard sat untasted before him. From time to time, when no one seemed to be looking, he emptied it into a corner. He smilingly held it out- with a handful of silver bits-to be filled anew each time the tall, tanned wine-wench sauntered by. They exchanged wordless smiles at her every visit. She'd taken her measure of his milk-white skin, dark eyes, and a certain air of calm danger that hovered about him. A pity he's so fat, she thought. Otherwise, he just might be worth an evening…

She glanced again at his fine-fingered, almost delicate hands, where they rested on knee and tabletop, sighed inwardly, and went on down the room, avoiding the hairy, groping hands-and hooks-of more boisterous patrons.

As the little man watched her go, the faintest of smiles touched his hps. If this had been another night, he might have been interested

… but just now he was hunting men.

The right men, to be precise; or women, if he could find them strong enough. He needed a few folk to aid him in a mission, folk good at skulking and swordplay. Pirates. He only needed a few-an expendable few- but they had to be the right few.

The sailors at a nearby table had been drinking steadily since dusk, and were beginning-one by one-to slip down senseless in their chairs. Soon the lammers would spot them and sling them out the door beside him, and the table would have new occupants.

Tankards thumped down on another table, hard by, and the watcher raised his own empty jack to his mouth to cover the slight turn of his head that would afford him the best listening he could get. Somewhere, someone dropped a dish with a battlelike clatter-and somewhere nearer, a very drunken pirate lifted his voice in tuneless song. Through it all the fat man listened without seeming to do so.

"A few more runs of lumber and cart-wheels down to Doegan, and they won't need to hire our holds any more! It's foolishness, I tell you! Next, the only honest work we'll be able to find'll be building roads-and once there're no honest coasters left, they'll be free to hunt down all afloat as pirates!"

"Nay, there'll be war before then. That's what wagons mean-war, not cutting us out o' trade. You think Doegan, say, and Konigheim trust each other enough to build good roads betwixt n' between, hey? Think again, addle-wits!"

"Addle-wits yourself, Rulgor-it's full of compliments y'are this night, aye? Ill grant that could mean war… but then, the whole Coast seems always close to war: we ship no swords anywhere, now do we, anymore?"

"Aye, but there's always food for our holds-even when they hate each other or march to war on each other, folk need to eat."

"Living folk, aye," another voice joined in hoarsely, as a gaunt-cheeked salt bent over the table with a dripping tankard in his hand. "But I've seen-and fought-ghost warriors!"

There was a general chorus of rude sounds and good-natured curses, but the new arrival added hotly, "Some of yell laugh a little less some dark watch, when they rise dripping out of the sea-and reach for thee!"

"Get you gone!" Rulgor said sharply, waving a half-eaten wheel of mottled green cheese in the gaunt pirate's face, but the damage was done.

Already another seaman was muttering, "I've never seen no deader rise out of the waves, but I've seen one of the ghost ships, to be sure!"

"Ghost ships," Rulgor snarled derisively, voice rising, "ghost ships!"

Half a dozen rough voices echoed his ridicule as the lammers came, shook their heads silently, and dragged the last of the drunks away. New arrivals who'd been leaning against the walls nursing their tankards crowded in to take the table.

"Ghost ships," whispered one straggle-bearded, one-eyed old pirate, in a hoarse, breathless bark that carried clearly up and down the room. "They rise from the depths on moonlit nights-I've seen 'em, more'n once! — and wallow along, mastless… and unhelmed."

"Aye? Have less to drink while ye're on watch, and theyll go away," one laconic voice observed, and there was a general roar of laughter. Undaunted, the one-eyed pirate went on.

"Rise, they do, to ram luckless vessels-if the gods think it's your time."

"It's your time, all right-sit and stow it!" someone roared.

The tale-teller glared down the room with the one eye he had left, made the whirlpool sign of the sea goddess, and added, "Sometimes-not often-Umberlee smiles, and a ghost ship runs aground somewhere… to make some lucky shoresmen rich with long-sodden gold and gems!"

"Oh, give off and get gone!" a handsomely-dressed man said scornfully. Charms of golden wire were wound into the small, jutting beard that curled from the point of his chin, and they bobbed as he sneered. The lamplight gleamed back from the rich brocade of his vest, but the shirt of fine white silk he wore beneath it was sticking to him in six places from sweat. "In every port I hear such tales. They're good for little more than to make women scream."

"Before or after they look at you?" someone said sarcastically, and the man in the vest swung around with eyes ablaze, trying to identify who'd spoken. His snarls were lost in a babble of other voices, wanting to tell everyone in the room of ships of the dead that loomed out of dark nights, scraped past terrified pirates, and plunged as quickly back into the endless darkness, or rammed and sank rivals just before a sea battle, or…

"Enough of ghosts, you loosetongues," the sarcastic pirate said, cutting through all the legends. "I've real news. You noticed, I'm sure, Orim Redbeard's Black Dragon at anchor out by the Jaws. And none of his crew here, tonight? Well, that's because a select few of 'em are skulking about us now. Hunting the last of Ralingor's crew-before those last few hunt them."

There was a sudden, tense silence, broken by someone asking, "What was that?" and someone else grunting, "Ralingor? By Umberlee's wettest kisses, what happened?"

Men made warding signs at the mention of the sea-goddess. Others, less fearful, snapped, "Aye: tell!"

Blackfingers Ralingor, for all his fabled stormy temper, was one of the most popular-and feared-pirates plying the Utter Coast. His deeds were legends, and he seemed one of the everpresent forces of life in Faerun-not something that could or should be swept away overnight.

The seaman with the sarcastic voice looked around, and then without further delay said flatly, "Orim Red-beard chased the Kissing Shark of Blackfingers Ralingor aground near Tenteeth Point six nights back."

"What?"

"Blackfingers? I don't believe it! His ship, aye, mayhap, but-"

"I've heard," the sarcastic sailor said with some satisfaction, "that Redbeard used fire-arrows, and burned all aboard her alive, as they cowered not daring to leave the hulk-for none of 'em could swim!"

Most of the men in the room were staring at the speaker. The fat man in the corner was looking at other faces-and at the man's last words, he was rewarded. The table that the drunks had been dragged away from was now crowded with seven drinkers-a dwarf and two women among them-who sat hunched forward, emptying two carry-kegs as fast as they could drain their tankards. Their faces had grown hard at the mention of the Kissing Shark, but bitter amusement had crossed more than one pair of hps at the assertion that none of Blackfingers's crew could swim.

A rather less alert man could have tumbled to the fact that he was looking at a table of surviving Sharkers… or rather, ex-Sharkers. The watcher covered his face with his tankard again and studied them more closely. This was his first chance to see more than seven wet shapes by moonlight.

Their leader seemed to be a big, heavily muscled Konigheimer… probably an escaped slave. He had the usual temper of such folk; just now, he was snarling something into his drink as one of the most battered and scarred seamen the observer had ever seen held on to one of his arms and whispered urgent soothings to him, while a moon-faced Edenvaler who had the hands and habits of a gambler clung to the other.

The bald dwarf had a nose and ears bedecked with rows of dangling earrings; the fat man tagged him as the whimsical wit of the group and looked at the others. There was the usual green youth hungry for fortune and adventure, and the two women-one a battered barrel of a wench who could probably out-muscle many men in a brawl, and the other as beautiful as a high court lady, with flawless skin, large and striking blue eyes, brows that were even more arresting, and a long, silky fall of black hair to match. The watcher looked away quickly before she felt the sudden weight of his gaze. Then he glanced back and saw the empty dagger-sheaths on her forearms, and the war-harness riding on her slim hips.

She leaned forward with sleek grace to say something to the big man at that moment, and her murmured words calmed him visibly. Yes, this one was every inch a pirate too.

The silent spy listened intently, but the seven Sharkers weren't saying much. "We must stick together," he heard the battered veteran say, his voice like gravel rattling down a metal chute.

Aye, they were grim and guarded. Time to strike them with fire and see what befell.

The fat man glanced around, saw the foppish pirate who'd been so scornful standing nearby, and noted how close he stood, face still flushed in anger, to the sarcastic taleteller. The fat man covered a smile with his tankard, and kept it raised to hide his lips as he said-in perfect mimicry of the sarcastic sailor-"Perfumed sot, what would you know of swimming?"

"Ridicule my looks, would you?" the well-dressed, scornful man snarled, voice rising, and the watcher glanced up in time to see the fop sweep a long, needlelike poniard from his boot and drive it into the face of the sarcastic tale-teller.

The startled sailor saved his eyes with a quick sweep of his arm, and with the toe of his boot lifted his stool into his attacker's face. The fop staggered back ward, spitting out teeth and curses, and the sarcastic man produced a hitherto-hidden knife of his own.

Men backed away hastily, spilling ale from their tankards, and a chant of "Blood! Blood!" arose. As men began making wagers on the outcome of this duel, the fat man saw a lammer peer around some of the watchers and then hasten to get the doorguards. Bladed weapons were banned in the Masques, what with all the anger and rivalries and ready drink-and by the looks of things, these two pirates were going to demonstrate why.

There was a sudden shout from the audience as one of the men made a lunge, there was a flurry of stabbing and flailing arms and twisting, and bright blood glistened on the face and arm of the sarcastic pirate.

Some of the watching drinkers hooted, and there was a chorus of shouted suggestions-but the well-dressed sailor was in no shape to hear them. He was sagging back against a table, a dark stain spreading down the front of his breeches.

The sarcastic man strode toward his foe, face set and dagger ready-but a bottle came spinning out of the shadows and struck his head sharply aside. He staggered and fell into someone's dinner-and the Masques erupted into battle.

All over the room men shouted and snatched at forks and tankards and stools, hurling and swinging and thrusting with all their might. The little man took hold of his tankard, just in case, and placed the fingertips of his other hand on the hilt of the slim needle-knife hidden up his own sleeve. Then he sat as still as his table, and watched!

His eyes were on the seven Sharkers as they thrust back their chairs and backed into a rough defensive ring, eyes wary. They were obviously expecting some of Redbeard's crew to come seeking them in this battle-and it seemed they might just find the trouble they were waiting for.

Two of the lammers waded into view through the fray, laying about vigorously in all directions with stout wooden clubs-until one of them went down with a hurled knife in his eye. The other fled, and a gong sounded.

By now the Masques was a chaos of splintering furniture, screams, breaking glass, oaths, and flailing fists. Bunkmates and men who were utter strangers were pounding each other for no reason at all but the drink and the pent-up anger of desperate men who spend their days in danger and discomfort and see a ready foe to lash out at.

The fat man found his feet, and the door. A man who wore a purple scarf on his head rose out of the fray with a cutlass in one hand.. and a loaded hand crossbow in the other.

He aimed it at the Konigheimer Sharker-and from the corner a hard-thrown stool struck aside the leaping quarrel an instant before it smashed into the face of the man who'd fired it.

As he went down, startled faces turned toward the little man in the dark nook. He beckoned to the seven Sharkers and said urgently, "The Daggers are on their way! Hurry!''