The Mercenaries

Chapter 7

Belmer waved a finger at Sharessa. "Not yet-we haven't had those drinks yet, and there's something more we have to do before I'll give you answers to such queries."

"And that is-T

"Search the entire ship together," the little man told her, "so that you all know, from your own seeing, we've no stowaways nor captive Blackfingers nor hidden loot aboard, before we start in flapping our jaws. Drinks first."

They did as Belmer had suggested-and if Rings thought that the powder that the little man stirred into his drink was a slightly different hue from what he put into theirs, he frowned and said nothing.

As Belmer and the Sharkers prowled around, watched by the puzzled Tharkaran crew, no one could fault the thoroughness of the little man's search. He peered behind every board that could be made to move, and lifted and looked under every moveable thing. In each room he paused and politely asked a different Sharker, "Are you betraying the whereabouts of this ship to anyone not on board, by any means?"

Each pirate answered no, in differing tones and degrees of defensive detail, as befitted their characters. Along the way, they all saw that Belmer had nothing on board but the clothes he stood in, a single change of clothing and a cloak, a dagger and some waxed cord, and a mirror to shave by. There were certainly no hidden rooms and no captives or gold. Their search ended back where it had begun: in the Sharkers' cabin.

"Why all this, anyway?" Kurthe growled.

"Despite the fact we've nothing worth taking, someone is after us, in the ship we've seen twice," Belmer replied. "Someone able to follow us-and with all the changes in course I've made, I'd say they've magic to trace us. It's either a spell cast by someone on board, or an enchantment already on some thing on our ship."

He looked around at them all, in the suddenly tense silence that followed, and added, "I've a means of knowing if a person bears an enchantment on their body. None of you, or the Tharkarans, are so afflicted, either yourselves or what you wear and carry. There's little else that we've brought aboard, beyond a little food, and-"

He stopped suddenly, and frowned down at the chest that lay, open and empty, under his boot. Then, slowly, he bent to peer at it.

As the Sharkers watched, Belmer raised one open hand. Anvil knew what that gesture meant, and handed the fat little man a sword.

Their employer ran the blade delicately in under the chest and slowly levered it up, to look at its bottom. It was a stout and well-worn assembly of dirty planks; nothing out of the ordinary.

"Not even a copper piece did Blackfingers leave us," Belmer murmured slowly as he looked at the cabin floor where the chest had rested, ran a hand lightly over its boards, and then gently lowered the chest back down to the floor.

He looked inside again, and then slid his borrowed blade down to touch the inside bottom of the chest, bringing a finger and thumb up to grasp it level with the top of the chest. Drawing the sword out, he laid it against the outside of the chest.

The watching Sharkers nodded; Ingrar gasped. The sword point was a good three fingerwidths from the bottom of the chest. The carrychest bought from the Masques had a false bottom.

The Sharkers drew in closer around the chest, swords and daggers sliding out silently. Belmer held up a warning hand, looked carefully at the bottom of the chest for long, silent moments, and then set his sword tip against the end of a particular board.

He drove down and in, suddenly, levering upwards, his face twisting with the effort. The wood groaned and then sprang up.

A black mist seemed to curl and rise for a moment from the hidden space below-and they all saw something glowing faintly there, once its drifting concealment was gone.

Belmer plunged his hand in and drew it forth: a glowing sphere about the size of his palm, its smooth surface broken by an eye and an ear.

The eye blinked at them, once-before Belmer drove his borrowed blade into and through it. Dark blood spurted in all directions and flared into strange green fire that was gone in a howling instant, leaving the little man holding only a few motes of dry, dark dust.

In a cabin where a red-bearded man stood warily watching in the doorway, a lean man in robes was bent over a glowing bowl that rested on an old and much-scarred table, watching and hstening intently.

A sudden groan, and then a confused rushing noise, erupted from the flickering waters in the bowl.

"The chest has been breached," the robed and cowled man explained, in his high, nasal voice. "It's-"

The bowl flickered, and from its waters burst a ghostly blade-the outline of a sword, slim and deadly, that thrust right up out of the bowl and plunged into the robed man's face.

The top of his cowl grew a momentary spiky protrusion. Then the blade drew back, dark and glistening, into the bowl.

Its radiance died in an instant-followed, half a breath later, by a splash as the robed man's face fell into it. He clawed at the tabletop vainly for a few moments and then lay still. The bearded man made a sound of disgust, turned in the doorway, and strode away.

Behind, in the dark cabin, there were rustlings as the rats came out.

The mists stole across the tireless waves like silver smoke in a hurry to rise and be off elsewhere, and Sharessa arose stiff and aching. When she came out of the scudder hut at the stern, there was freshly warmed lemon-laced water to wash in, and Ingrar had a jack of hot herb root tea ready for her. She thanked him with a smile and a shoulder-squeeze, and warmed her hands on the cup as she went to the rail. The Morning Bird was running easily out to sea under low sail, Turbalt fussing among the rope coils and his weary-looking crew as usual. A rosy row of clouds was parting in the eastern sky, as the sun sent lances of its brightest light after their ship.

A fish jumped out of the waves, catching the sun for a single flashing moment. Sharessa smiled in the salt breeze, and looked back at the distant purple of the mountains. The Free Cities were invisible at this distance, as were the prouder, taller towers of Doegan to the She stiffened, stared, shaded her eyes with a hasty hand, and then flung down her jack unfinished and ran back to the stern. "Hey," Rings grunted, as she rushed past him on his way to the scudder. "Can't ye lasses finish at one go? It's my turn."

Sharessa reached the leeward corner of the deck, caught hold of the mizzen cables, and stared back along their wake into the roiling mists. Then she spat out a curse, spun around, and shouted, "Ship chasing us down! All up!"

Belmer stepped out from behind the mainmast and strode unhurriedly toward her, inclining his head in acknowledgement as calmly as if she'd commented on his hairstyle. The thunder of boots ascending from the tween-cabin echoed around him for a moment, and then Jolloth, Kurthe, and Belgin came on deck, the moon-faced Edenvaler struggling to hold his pants up with his belt, sword belt, and scabbarded blade clutched in an untidily flapping tangle in one hand.

"Who is it?" Kurthe snarled, rubbing eyes that were still heavy with slumber. He was unshaven and tousled, and wore the usual surliness that went with his rising. Sharessa gave him a shrug, and pointed back at the racing silver mists astern.

Her gesture was hardly necessary. The ship behind them was low and dark and larger than their own, its maroon mainsail belled out with the wind. It was overtaking them at a furious rate, shearing through the silver tatters like a wolf ninning down sheep.

Turbalt gave a moan, turned, and ran along his deck, shouting orders to up the Bird's own mainsail, and do it quickly, by all the weeping gods! His fearful rush took him right past Kurthe, who was slumped against the rail in a doze, the first rattle of a snore escaping past the arm he was leaning on.

Belmer sighed. "There's no point in all that, captain," he remarked quietly, his words lost in Turbalt's rush toward the bows. After a glance or two aft, the crew reacted with frenzied fear, for it seemed they recognized the ship as well as Belmer obviously did.

Sharessa and Rings both looked clear questions at the man who'd hired them, as Brindra joined them at the stern. Belmer inclined his head toward the fast-approaching ship and said, "Yonder vessel is The Black Dragon; or 'Blackfinger's Bane,' as I heard them calling it back in Tharkar."

As the lips of the Sharkers tightened into angry lines, he turned away from the stern rail and walked back toward the masts. "Come," he said simply. The mercenaries cast quick looks back at the swiftly coming pirate ship, and then followed, hands checking the readiness of weapons without thought.

Ingrar, for one, half-expected their employer to fling aside a tarp and reveal some sort of magical hurler-of-lightnings or other weapon of doom, but Belmer merely took Kurthe by the elbow as gently as a nursemaid, and guided him, still stumbling in his morning doze, to a halt amidships, standing along the rail on the side where their pursuer would shortly draw past. The rest of the Sharkers gathered in a line along the rail.

"Will they try to board us?" Brindra asked, voice husky with sleep and fear. "Shouldn't we make ready with nets and spears?"

Belmer gestured at the rail. "Stand here, and stay quiet, and watch." Something that might have almost been a smile touched his lips for a moment, and he added softly, "It's amazing how far one can go through life, behaving thus." He turned away, and then added over his shoulder, "Wake him, will you? Gently."

After a startled moment of silence, Jolloth nudged Kurthe and rumbled, "Arise, queen of slumber." He got no more than a murmur in reply and gave Kurthe a harder shove.

The Konigheimer came fully awake, with a rumble and a hard glare. "What're you playing a-"

And then he joined in the general tense silence on the decks of the Morning Bird, as the ship that might well bring their deaths swept down upon them.

The frozen snarl of the carved black drake on the bowsprit grinned at them as it came nearer and nearer, bobbing slightly with the seas. Along the rail of the low, rakish hull beyond it they saw pirates gathering: a motley crew drawn from the alleys and thieves' dens of half southern Faerun.

There was a gaudy-silked Calishite, one of his arms ending in a three-spiked metal ball instead of a hand; next to him jostled a bare-chested northerner from far Gundarlun, his blond mane longer than many a woman's. Beyond, a pair of moon-faced Bhutanans were shouldered aside by a grim, bristle-browed Tuigan, and at his side strode a bald, brown-skinned man whose forearms were scaled like those of a serpent-the first signs of the "eating disease" that only afflicts those born in the jungles of Chult. Golden earrings and belt buckles gleamed in plenty, and the hilt of a cutlass gleamed at every hip, most of them flanked by several knives. There were razor-edged knuckle rings, too, and many a tanned face or forearm bore old, ragged sword scars. Hard, eager eyes and mouths that smiled without mirth lined up along the rail of the pirate ship as it drew alongside the smaller, slower Morning Bird. A lazy rat sunned itself on one tattooed shoulder, and its old and grizzled owner smiled across the water in a grin that displayed empty gums. The whiplike tail of the spiced snake he'd been chewing on dangled from the corner of his mouth as he tested the notched and scarred edge of his cutlass with one finger, watched blood well up, and nodded in satisfaction.

The seven Sharkers watched death draw closer, and tried to keep their faces impassive-but the hands of every one of them strayed to the hilts of their weapons, knuckles going white.