Corsair

FIFTEEN

8 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Kraken Queen raced past the Arches of Hulburg’s harbor an hour after midnight, her oars sweeping her eagerly ahead through the whitecaps and the wind-driven rain. At her back came Daring, Wyvern, and Seawof-all told, almost five hundred Black Moon corsairs thirsting for blood, rape, and treasure. Few lights showed in the town, only a handful of streetlamps and the occasional lanternlit doorway of a tavern or merchant tradeyard. Sergen Hulmaster shaded his eyes from the wind and the rain, peering anxiously at the shoreline. If some word of the Black Moon fleet had come to Hulburg, he expected that ranks of Shieldsworn, merchant coster mercenaries, and even the laughable militia companies of the Spearmeet would be waiting by the wharves to repel the attack. But the waterside streets seemed abandoned.

Sergen allowed himself a small smile. “You were right, Father,” he said. “I think we’ve surprised them.” Given the mysterious absence of Moonshark, he’d spent most of the three-hour sprint from the ruins of Seawave fighting down his own misgivings about the enterprise. It seemed an inauspicious beginning to the night, and he’d urged his father to wait. But Kamoth had been impatient to launch the attack, worried that the worsening weather might make it impossible to strike in a timely manner and that delay would result in the fleet’s discovery.

The High Captain grinned fiercely, throwing a challenge to fate. “Of course I was right!” he said. “You’ve no stomach for this sort of stroke, Sergen. Caution and forethought are fine, but sometimes you need to throw fortune to the wind and see what comes.” He held out his arms, allowing the crewmen who attended him to finish strapping on his scarlet armor. It was fashioned in the shape of a long coat of piscine scales, with finlike embellishments at the joints and an open-faced helm with a fanged sea-serpent design.

Sergen glanced down at his own armor, a light shirt of black chain mail beneath a tough leather coat. “I hope we don’t miss Moonshark’s complement. Another seventy men would greatly fortify my confidence.”

Kamoth waved one gauntleted hand at the sky. “Perhaps, but the wind and weather favor us too much to wait for that sluggard Narsk, my boy. A swift run from the rendezvous, a dark night to hinder anyone trying to organize a defense of the town, and a quick escape when it’s time to go. The Prince of Demons will drink his fill tonight!”

Sergen nodded but did not answer. Long ago Kamoth had sworn him to the service of the demon lord Demogorgon, but the exiled lordling had never found much use for groveling in front of bloodstained altars. He was content to allow his father to glorify Demogorgon in any way he wished, so long as Kamoth didn’t expect him to do the same. “Any sign of Seadrake?” he called to the lookouts.

“No, Lord Sergen! She’s not in port!” the man aloft called back down.

Sergen relaxed a little. Outnumbered four to one, Seadrake wouldn’t have lasted long against the Black Moon flotilla, but he knew better than to underestimate his stepsister, Kara, or his stepcousin, Geran. He’d done so only a few short months ago, and it had cost him the lordship of Hulburg, the friendship of Mulmaster, a great amount of wealth and power, and very nearly his life. Somehow they would have found a way to cause him more trouble with their one warship than they should have been able to in any reasonable world. “But if she’s not here, then where is she?” he wondered aloud and began to worry all over again.

“Likely sniffing after our trail in the waters of the west end,” Kamoth answered. He finished donning his armor. The pirate lord checked the fit with several hard slaps to his shoulders and chest. Then he moved over to the rail and looked at the other vessels following Kraken Queen into the harbor. “Give the signal!” he told the deckhand standing there.

The fellow lifted above the ship’s sternrail a bullseye lantern that held a red-tinted piece of glass. He opened and closed its shutter three times. From the quarterdecks of the other ships, red lights winked back at Kraken Queen in answer. The flotilla split up as each ship began to steer toward its own assigned landing point. “Damn Moonshark, and damn that fool Narsk,” Kamoth muttered. “I hope for his sake that I don’t find reason to wish I’d waited for the fifth ship.”

“The weather might’ve delayed him, High Captain,” Kraken Queen’s first mate said. “He might be only an hour behind us.”

“He’d better be, or the next time I see him, I swear I’ll strap him to the foretop with his own guts and leave him there for the gulls!” Kamoth went back to the ship’s wheel and peered ahead over the rowers. “Easy right rudder now, helm! There, steady as she goes. All right … all right … avast rowing! Raise and ship oars!”

Kraken Queen glided ahead on momentum, coasting closer to the town’s wharves. The abandoned Veruna pier was Kamoth’s target, and the old pirate expertly guided his ship alongside. It seemed too fast to Sergen, and he surreptitiously braced himself against the rail. But then gangs of deckhands leaped to the pier with mooring lines, checking the large galley with the heavy creaking of taut lines and timber pilings. The whole wharf trembled as Kraken Queen came to a stop.

“Well done!” Kamoth called. “Now go! The town’s yours for the taking!”

With a wild chorus of shouts, laughter, and battle cries, Kraken Queen’s crew swarmed over the side and ran into the town. Kamoth himself grinned once at Sergen and followed after his crew, a wicked cutlass gleaming in his hand.

Sergen summoned Kerth and the rest of his magically bound bodyguards and followed more purposefully to the streets of town. He didn’t see any particular need to murder, loot, or rape anyone; he was a very wealthy man, and he could afford all the women he cared for. His task for the night was to watch for resistance and direct the Black Moon corsairs against any trouble spots. If his father wanted to lead from the front and set an example of bloodthirst for the men, that was Kamoth’s concern. Sergen wanted to make sure the raid would have the effect on Hulburg that he desired-no more, and no less.

The first screams rang out in the night, followed by the clash of steel on steel. Shouts of alarm arose from the sleeping town. It was not exactly the triumphant return to Hulburg Sergen had envisioned for himself during the long months of exile in Melvaunt, but he couldn’t suppress a predatory grin. He was likely the single most dangerous enemy of the Hulmasters, the man who’d come closer to unseating the harmachs than anyone in a hundred years, and for tonight at least he roamed the streets with impunity. Geran or Kara would have a fit if they knew I was standing here watching the sacking of the harbor, he thought. The smell of smoke drifted to his nostrils, and the ruddy red glare of fires began to grow in the shadowed alleyways and winding streets. “This might turn out even better than I’d intended,” he said.

“Not for the Hulburgans,” his armsman Kerth answered with a hungry grin.

“It’s the cost I must pay to unseat the harmach, Kerth. The Hulmasters brought this on themselves when Geran and Kara thwarted me before.” Sergen studied the scene for a moment longer and then walked back to the base of the wharf where Kraken Queen was tied up. Dozens of corsairs waited there anxiously, whooping with delight when another building caught fire and shouting encouragement at those of their fellows who remained in view. One man in five from all four ships had been ordered to assemble here, forming a strong reserve of manpower in case the Hulburgans managed to mount some unexpectedly determined defense of their town or tried to retaliate against the pirates’ ships. That, of course, was Sergen’s addition to Kamoth’s plan of attack. None of the fellows assigned this duty were happy about it, since they wanted to be released to participate in the sack. But Sergen was pleased to see at a quick count that most of the men promised had actually reported for this duty.

“Can’t we just have a look in some of those storehouses over there?” one of the corsairs waiting in the reserve asked. He pointed across the street. “We won’t be far off, Lord Sergen.”

“And what would the High Captain say if he called for you to help him, but you’d run off to start stuffing your pockets?” Sergen answered. “I think I’d mind my orders, if I were you. If all goes well, you’ll be relieved in an hour, and it’ll be your turn to enjoy the town.”

The fellow looked glum, but he gave up the argument. Sergen decided to have a look around to see if there was someplace he could put the reserve to work, and led his small knot of bodyguards along Bay Street, searching for any signs of trouble. Gangs of pirates ran from building to building, some already burdened by armfuls of loot. First he checked on the Marstel merchant compound and was relieved to see that the Black Moon corsairs were avoiding it as they were supposed to. Then he headed inland a block and walked eastward along Cart Street, passing more pirates at their work. It might defeat my purpose if the Black Moon actually razes the town, he thought with a grimace. He wanted something left of the place, after all.

The clash of arms grew heavier ahead-much heavier. Sergen frowned and hurried forward to take a look. He reached the corner of Cart Street and High Street, the heart of the town’s commerce district, and saw ahead of him a solid phalanx of the harmach’s own Shieldsworn. The Hulburgan soldiers, a small company of perhaps thirty or forty, fought their way down the street, driving the pirate gangs ahead of them. Sergen scowled at the show of early resistance. The Shieldsworn company was interfering with his long-laid plans to humble Hulburg, and he didn’t care for it in the least. They needed to be broken, and the sooner the better. “Damn them!” Sergen snarled. “Where did they come from?”

“Simple chance, I would guess,” Kerth answered. He moved in front of Sergen and eyed the approaching soldiers nervously. “It seems that not all the harmach’s soldiers were asleep tonight. That’s too many for us to deal with, Lord Sergen. We’d better move on.”

“Agreed,” said Sergen. He frowned and reminded himself that no clash of arms ever went exactly as one planned. It was only to be expected that some of the town’s defenders would organize a brief resistance; fortunately the Black Moon was ready for them. “We’ll go back toward the docks and draw from the reserve to chase off these fellows.”

They turned and retreated down Cart Street to the intersection with Plank Street, and here more fighting greeted Sergen and his guards. A large mass of Hulburgans, most wearing hastily donned coats of old mail or leather jerkins, held Plank Street against the roving gangs of pirates and likewise were advancing toward the harbor. It was more of the sort of resistance that Sergen had hoped to overwhelm with the initial surprise of the Black Moon attack, and he made a note to himself to send more pirates here too. But a dark suspicion was growing in his heart. “I don’t like the look of this,” he said to Kerth. “Come on!”

He backtracked through the alleyway south of Cart Street and jogged westward to avoid the Spearmeet company. At the small square by the Council Hall, he found a strong detachment of Double Moon Coster and House Sokol sellswords standing watch, and he swore viciously. There were too many soldiers and militiamen ready to fight in the streets of the town. A few he might have expected, but there seemed to be companies of Hulburgans and mercenaries all over the town. “By Bane’s black hand, they were ready for us! They knew we were coming!” he snarled.

“Do you think this is a trap, m’lord?” Kerth asked.

“I have no idea, but we’ve got a fight on our hands.” Sergen turned back toward the water, and this time he ran. He shouted for roving gangs of pirates to follow him as he passed by; some did, and others ignored him, but he had no time to argue. He emerged onto Bay Street and hurried back to the corsairs waiting at the pierside where Kraken Queen was tied up. Quickly he detailed off half their number and sent them up Plank Street to scatter the Hulburgan militia there, and dispatched runners to gather in the roving gangs of corsairs. They needed to bring together the strength of the Black Moon, or they’d get cut to pieces in fours and fives as they blundered into the town’s defenders. Then he sent another man to go ring Kraken Queen’s bell to signal a general recall-three sharp strikes, a pause, then three more, repeated several times. Pirates began to straggle back toward the ships.

Resplendent in his scarlet-scale armor, Kamoth jogged into view from an alleyway, with a dozen cutthroats at his back. He strode angrily up to Sergen. “Did you order the ship’s bell struck?” he demanded. “We haven’t been here half an hour yet! What is the matter?”

“Hulburgan companies are sealing off the streets leading to the waterfront!” Sergen said to his father. “They mean to trap us here by the docks. They were ready for us!”

“Then why weren’t they waiting for us on the waterfront? Why isn’t Seadrake here?” Kamoth scowled fiercely, considering the situation. “Didn’t you say that your ally in town would warn you if the harmach caught wind of our plan?”

Sergen stopped and thought about that. “Yes, I did,” he said. Rhovann was well placed in the councils of the town’s leaders. If the harmach had learned of the coming attack, the elf mage would have told him. In fact, they’d made arrangements for just that eventuality. “They were warned, but only a short time before we arrived,” he concluded. “They didn’t have time to summon the Harmach’s Council or make plans for a stronger defense, and my ally here hasn’t had the chance to contact me. This is an improvised defense.”

Kamoth turned on Sergen with a bloodthirsty grin. “Then it doesn’t matter that they were warned. The harmach’s guards are spread out all over the town trying to pin us down by the harbor. We’ll smash them one street at a time, and the town will be ours by sunrise. Where are they?”

“I saw detachments on High Street, Plank Street, and Fish Street. I just sent fifty corsairs up Plank Street to drive off the Spearmeet gathered there. I imagine there must be a force blocking the Lower Bridge too.”

“Good. You stay here and muster all the pirates who answer your recall. I’ll take what you’ve got here and go deal with the Shieldsworn.” Kamoth stepped close and seized Sergen’s shoulder in one hand. He painfully ground his steel-armored fingers into Sergen’s flesh as he lowered his voice; Sergen flinched away. “Do not ring that damned bell again unless the fleet of Hillsfar is standing into harbor, boy. I’m not to be called away from my business here every time you take a fright.”

Sergen winced, but he did not protest. If he had to guard Kamoth from his own recklessness he would, regardless of his father’s anger. He watched as the High Captain gathered the corsairs standing nearby and led them back into the town at a run. Meanwhile more pirates slowly trickled back to the dockside. Fuming over his father’s insinuation of cowardice, he paced back and forth by the waterside, struggling to master his anger.

“Lord Sergen? There’s someone asking for you-an elf.” A deckhand from Kraken Queen stood with his cap in his hands nearby.

“Rhovann?” Sergen murmured. He wondered what the mage wanted from him. They’d made no plans to meet face-to-face during the raid, but then again, Sergen hadn’t been sure he would accompany the Black Moon against Hulburg. He motioned to the messenger. “Bring him here.”

He waited on the pier, listening to the sounds of the fighting that raged throughout Hulburg’s streets. Half a dozen sizeable fires now burned in scattered places throughout the town. If the night hadn’t been so damp, Hulburg might have lost everything west of the Winterspear. As matters stood, he thought the townsfolk would likely save most of the town. Then Rhovann Disarnnyl appeared through the rain and the smoke, dressed in a long hooded cloak. An enormous figure the size of an ogre towered behind him, dressed in a long brown robe with a heavy hood of its own. The creature’s hands were pallid, almost waxy, in complexion. It carried two captives with their hands bound-a young, dark-haired girl not more than nine or ten years of age, and a black-haired woman in a blue dress whom Sergen recognized as Mirya Erstenwold. The girl must be her daughter, he realized. But what is Rhovann doing with Mirya as his prisoner? She certainly had value as a hostage, but he hadn’t realized that the elf mage even knew of her existence.

“Good evening, Lord Sergen,” Rhovann said. He offered a tight smile. “I see you brought your friends with you.”

“Lord Disarnnyl,” Sergen answered. “I’m surprised to find you out and about. I would have thought that you’d be well away from Hulburg tonight. It’s not safe on the streets, after all.”

“Bastion-my large friend here-deters a good deal of trouble,” Rhovann answered. Sergen looked up at the huge, cowled figure standing behind the elf and glimpsed a pasty face, almost doughy in its complexion, beneath the hood. Dull, lifeless eyes regarded him in return. He realized that the thing was a construct or golem of some sort, likely created through Rhovann’s magic. The elf mage motioned for his huge guardian to set down the Erstenwolds, and continued. “I have a problem-two problems, really-that I hope you can attend for me.”

“So I see.” Both Erstenwolds seemed unconscious, although Mirya’s eyelids fluttered and a frown creased her brow. Gags covered their mouths. “What exactly do you expect me to do with them?”

“Mirya had the poor judgment to spy on me during a sensitive conversation. The little one had the misfortune of being at home when Bastion and I came to collect her mother. They both have seen too much to remain in Hulburg. Since there will doubtless be some number of people carried away by your Black Moon friends in the morning, I thought these two might be added to your catch.”

“There’s a simpler alternative, you know.”

“Of course, but I am no common murderer. These two are not my enemies and are harmless to me once you remove them from Hulburg.” Rhovann glanced at the unconscious Erstenwolds, now lying side by side on the rain-slick wood of the wharf. “Besides, they are dear to Geran Hulmaster. It may prove very useful to keep them alive as long as he is at liberty.”

Sergen pursed his lips. He was not anxious to burden himself with a couple of captives and was not as squeamish about such matters as Rhovann seemed to be, but his elf ally had an excellent point about their potential usefulness. If nothing else, simply selling them into slavery in the Inner Sea lands might make for an even more vicious flavor of revenge against his nemesis than killing them out of hand. Alive, they were far more useful against Geran than they would be dead.

“That’s a fair point,” Sergen conceded to Rhovann. “The day may come when I need to bait a trap, and these two would serve nicely. If you please, have your large friend pick them up and follow me.”

Rhovann gestured, and Bastion silently picked up Mirya and her daughter again. The creature followed Sergen and Rhovann to the pier where Kraken Queen was tied up, and handed them to the corsair crewmen when Rhovann directed it to do so. “Lock them in my cabin for now,” Sergen told the pirates. There would be plenty of other captives for the ship’s hold, and he wasn’t exactly certain what he was going to do with the Erstenwolds yet.

“Is there anything else?” he asked Rhovann.

“No, I must return to my quarters and resume my disguise.” Rhovann’s lip curled contemptuously. “I will report the harmach’s counsels to you as soon as I can. I expect I’ll know something by tomorrow evening.”

“Very good,” Sergen answered. “I will-”

From the deck behind him there came a shout: “A ship’s entering the harbor!”

Sergen and Rhovann turned at the lookout’s cry. “Seadrake or Moonshark?” Sergen wondered aloud. He climbed up to Kraken Queen’s quarterdeck and peered seaward. Rhovann followed just a few steps behind. By the dim glow of the city’s fires, they could make out the long, low, scarlet hull of a half galley standing into harbor, her oars sweeping vigorously.

“It’s Moonshark!” the lookout shouted.

“About time,” Sergen observed. Whether the raid succeeded or failed mattered little to him, but it was very important to preserve the strength of the Black Moon no matter what happened here tonight. Narsk might have been tardy, but his sailors might turn the tide in the battle raging along Hulburg’s waterfront. Better late than never, as they said. “Good. An hour late, but we can certainly use Narsk and his men now!”

Moonshark raced toward the wharves at a full battle pace, straining at her oars as if eager to join the fray. “He is certainly making up for lost time,” Rhovann remarked. “You seem to have matters well in hand here, and I must return to my place before I am missed. Make sure you keep your men under control; we don’t want the city razed.”

“I will,” Sergen murmured, but his eyes were still fixed on the approaching Moonshark. Narsk didn’t bother to veer off to his left and make for the empty dock by the Sokol merchant yard; he simply came straight in, aiming at the center wharf where Seawolf and Daring were tied up. Sergen frowned and peered closer, his hands gripping the rail. The confident grin on his face faded, and he gaped at the approaching warship. With a ragged motion she raised her oars into the air and began to fold them inboard. “It can’t be,” he said. “Narsk’s gone mad!”

Rhovann paused at the ladder and looked back at him. “What is it?”

Sergen threw out his arm and pointed. “He’s not going alongside Daring. He’s going to ram!”