Authors: Richard Baker
“Well enough,” Mirya said. “We’ll follow you.”
Hamil led the way as they scaled the tree. It proved to be an easy climb; the heavy vines helped in the few difficult parts. Geran feared at first that it might be too hard for Selsha, but she scampered up the trunk like a nimble little monkey. Of course, she likely spent more time climbing trees than he did. A few feet below the level of the stern windows, another large fork provided a reasonably comfortable perch that was safely out of sight from the deck above. Geran silently motioned for Mirya and Selsha to
wait there, and the two Erstenwolds nodded in acknowledgment. Then he continued up after Hamil.
Better let me have a look first, Hamil said silently. He crept up the last few feet and peeked over the rail, studying the decks above. Seven sailors, three armsmen in mail, your cousin Sergenand another umber hulk. They’re working up at the bow. It’s driven deep into the trees. No one’s on the quarterdeck.
“An umber hulk too?” The odds were long for Geran’s taste, just with Sergen and his Black Moon allies. He was fairly confident that he could best Sergenthey’d crossed swords before, and he’d had the better of the matchbut the presence of ten more enemies and a powerful monster made it simply impossible. Frustration and despair settled over him. Perhaps he could kill Sergen and a pirate or two before he was cut down, but what was the point of that? It wouldn’t keep the rest of the corsairs from sailing off with Seadrake and stranding the Hulburgans in Neshuldaar. He thought hard for a moment, and then he heard another large branch crashing to the forest floor from the ship’s forecastle. If he waited too long, he’d lose his chance altogether. But what chance was there?
Hamil read the despair in his face and grimaced sympathetically. We might be able to stow away, the halfling suggested. Hide somewhere belowdecks until we can thin out their numbers one or two at a time.
A desperate strategy, Geran answered him. And we couldn’t put Mirya and Selsha at such risk. Still, he didn’t see any other possibilities.
A sudden chorus of shouts from the deck above interrupted him. “Stand to your arms! The sorcerer approaches!” the armsmen cried. Footsteps hurried across the deck, and the axe strokes ceased.
“Break out crossbows!” Sergen shouted. “Man the arbalests! He’ll stand off and slay us all with his magic if we can’t drive him off!”
“Sarth?” Geran whispered. He risked a quick scramble up to the rail and peeked over. Sergen and his men scurried all over the deck, seizing weapons and taking cover. A pirate on the quarterdeck hurriedly cranked one of the heavy arbalests mounted at the forward rail. Others crouched by the gunwales, their attention fixed on a distant figure. Streaking over the treetops with his flying magic, Sarth arrowed through the air toward the entangled ship, resplendent in his robes of scarlet and gold. The tiefling aimed his scepter and let loose a searing barrage of bright blue-white sparks. Spitting and crackling, the sparks seared great black marks in the
deck; one caught a half-ore pirate who ducked a little too late. The half-ore shrieked and fell smoking to the deck, limbs flailing uncontrollably. Crossbows snapped and hissed in reply, but shields of unseen magic kept the quarrels from finding Sarth’s flesh. Still the deadly bolts forced Sarth to dodge aside. Evidently he didn’t trust his magic to halt a well-aimed quarrel fired at a stationary target.
Hamil grinned. “I think our odds just improved!”
Geran nodded. If the sorcerer’s appearance wasn’t the chance he was looking for, he didn’t know what was. “Quicktell him we’re here, and get him to move toward the bow!” he said.
The halfling fixed his eyes on Sarth and frowned in concentration. He had to be fairly close to speak into someone’s mind, and the tiefling was hovering a good distance from the side of the ship. But Sarth quickly glanced toward them with a surprised look. The tiefling’s teeth flashed in a fearsome smile, and he swooped off to his left, moving toward the front of the ship. Sergen, his armsmen, and the Black Moon corsairs all turned to follow him.
“Get your bow back from Mirya,” Geran told Hamil. The halfling nodded and slipped back down the trunk. Then Geran cleared his mind to conjure up the best defensive spell he knewthe Scales of the Dragon. “Theillalagh na drendir,” he said. A rippling aura made of violet shards of magical force shimmered into existence around him, flowing over his body like a coat of scales. Hamil returned a moment later with the bow and quiver.
“The umber hulk first,” Geran said softly. “If we can slay it quickly, we’ll have a fighting chance against the rest.”
I doubt I’ll be able to drive an arrow through that monster’s hide, Hamil told Geran.
“Give it a try. If nothing else, you might distract it for me.” He surveyed the deck quickly. Sergen’s small band had worked furiously to clear away the branches that snagged the forward shrouds and stays; the Black Moon deckhands and armsmen now crouched amid the cluttered branches and canvas, snapping off quarrels at Sarth whenever the sorcerer showed himself. Then, before Geran could think better of it, he swarmed up the last few feet of the branch and vaulted over the ship’s rail.
No one noticed his appearance at first. He dashed forward and leaped down the steep steps leading to the main deck. Behind him, Hamil raced
up to the forward edge of the quarterdeck and halted at the top of the steps, taking aim. His bow thrummed twice; the first arrow took the pirate by the arbalest in the middle of his back, and the second ruined one of the great insectile eyes of the hulk. The creature screeched in agony, its great claws flailing in the air. Geran immediately attacked the creature’s flank. He stabbed it at the meeting of its leg and torso, and his point sank through the soft chitin of the joint. Dark ichor splattered the deck, and the monster’s leg buckled underneath it, but it responded with a furious rake of one great claw that he barely ducked under.
“Geran!” Sergen snarled. He whipped his rapier from the sheath. “You two, keep working on getting us free,” he snapped at his crew. “The rest of you, to arms! I want Geran Hulmaster dead!” Then Sergen threw himself to the deck as one of Hamil’s arrows sped right through the place where he’d been standing.
Geran backpedaled from another of the enraged umber hulk’s blows and saw a big, mailed armsman closing in behind him. The fellow’s head was shaven, and his face was tattooed with arcane sigils. Leaving the umber hulk to flounder to its feet, Geran wheeled and leaped to meet his new foe. This fellow was a swordsman of some skill, and he parried Geran’s high slash competently before returning a similar stroke. For several heartbeats they dueled fiercely, steel ringing shrilly as blade met blade. Geran gave back a step and suddenly turned his blade to throw his opponent’s edge into the mainmast nearby. The weapon caught for an instant, and Geran leaned close to throw his right elbow into the man’s face. It was nothing that his old teacher, Daried Selsherryn, would have approved of, but it worked; the big man reeled away, blinded by the pain of a flattened nose. Geran would have finished him then, but Sergen rushed him from his other side. The exiled lord attacked with a series of lightning-swift jabs and lunges, using his natural speed and light blade to good advantage.
Again Geran had to give ground, until he found an opportunity to snarl the words of a sword spell. With a cry of “Reith arrocb.‘“he conjured a brilliant white gleam to his edge and launched a flurry of counterattacks. He gave Sergen a shallow slash to the left arm, and Sergen leaped back with a curse. But before Geran could press his stepcousin, the umber hulk hurled itself back into the fray with a roar of anger, splintering the deck with a single pulverizing blow of its massive claws. He managed to slash it once across the mandibles and then had to leap for his life.
“You seem a little overmatched, Geran,” Sergen taunted him. “You would have been wiser to let me go, I think!”
There are too many of them, he realized. As soon as I corner one, the others will have me. He risked a quick glance toward Hamil and saw his small companion fighting against a pair of pirates with his daggers in hand. A brilliant flash of lightning, followed by a great thunderclap, echoed through the treetops as Sarth blasted a small knot of crossbow-armed Black Moons near the ship’s foremast. The ship lurched to one side as one of the branches trapping the bowsprit shattered under the impact of the sorcerer’s spell.
“I think the odds are improving,” Geran replied. All he had to do was avoid getting killed by the umber hulk and keep Sergen and his bodyguard busy a little longer, and Sarth’s magic would eventually sweep the deck clean of pirates.
“Geran!” Mirya scrambled over the rail back by the quarterdeck and then turned to help Selsha make the jump. “The spider-creatures found us! They’re coming up after us!”
Sergen gave a single bark of laughter. “Ha! I see you’ve met the neogi, then. So much for improving the odds. Cousin!”
“By all the screaming Hells,” Geran snarled. He scrambled back from another blow of the umber hulk’s fist, trying to keep the mainmast between the monster and himself. The tattooed swordsman edged closer, and on the opposite side Sergen glided in with a grin of anticipation. He couldn’t afford any more foes, not at the moment. He risked a quick glance forward and saw that the two pirates were still working on cutting the ship free. Another large limb cracked and dropped away, falling to the forest floor far below, and the ship’s deck suddenly canted in the other direction. She’s working loose! he realized.
He looked back to the quarterdeck. “Hamil! Take the wheel and get us away from here!” he shouted.
Hamil nodded. He drove back one of his pirates with a furious frenzy and then turned on the other one and rolled up under the man’s guard to bury a knife in his belly. Before the fellow could even sink to the deck, the halfling dashed across the quarterdeck and seized the wheel. Hamil glanced once at the sails and then turned the wheel to the right and willed the ship’s bow to rise. Seadrake twisted awkwardly where she was snagged, and the deck’s list grew so precarious that Geran feared she might go over
on her side and dump everyone on board to the ground. Then, with the splintering of wood and the snap of parting lines, the caravel heaved her bow free and pointed her nose to the sky.
Instantly the deck rolled hard in the opposite direction as the ship leaped skyward. Geran lost his footing and slid to the opposite gunwale, catching himself there. Mirya locked one arm around the sternrail and hugged Selsha tight with the other. The second of Hamil’s pirates was not so lucky and was hurled off his feet when the ship rolled. He toppled over the side with a terrified wail. Sergen and his tattooed swordsman fetched up against the rail, but the two pirates who’d been at the bow working to cut the ship free now tumbled aft, rolling along the deck as the bow shot skyward. The umber hulk seized the mainmast in one claw, and reached out with its other arm to seize Geran. Its talons came up inches short of Geran’s leg, raking the tough old oak of the deck like soft sand as Geran kicked himself out of the way.
“Kerth! Kill the halfling!” Sergen shouted. The tattooed armsman steadied himself against the rail and then climbed back toward the quarterdeck.
The halfling glanced back at Mirya. “Take the wheel! Hold her steady!” he cried. Mirya hurried over to seize the ship’s helm, while Hamil retrieved his daggers and moved to meet the swordsman Kerth in the narrow space at the top of the quarterdeck ladder. But at that moment several arachnid legs appeared over the sternrail, and one of the neogi clambered over the side. It hissed at Mirya and her daughter, and Selsha screamed. The girl backed away from the spiderlike creature, which scuttled after her.
Geran struggled to get to his feet and go to her aid, but the umber hulk released its grip on the mainmast and lunged for him. This time its iron-hard talons ripped across his torso. Only his magical wardings saved his life, but even so the claws tore flesh and bruised bone. He was knocked spinning across the deck by the creature’s incredible strength. It pounced on him with surprising speed for a monster so large. He threw his sword up to fend it off, and then he made the fatal mistake: he looked into its eyes.
Instantly, his thoughts seemed to splinter into vertigo and nonsense. He staggered back, unable to remember where he was or what he was doing. The roaring of wind, the crackle of the tattered sails, the dizzying rush of the forest-covered hillsides spinning away under the rail, and the brilliant
stars reeling by in a sky of pure blackall these things crowded in on his senses in a fearsome jumble. Clumsily he threw his sword point out, hoping to fend off the monster looming over him, but the umber hulk batted aside the blade and pounded him into the deck. He groaned and tried to crawl away, but it seized him around the waist and dragged him to its huge mandibles. Its scythelike mouthparts clacked together and scissorred eagerly, anticipating the taste of his flesh. “Geran!” Mirya shrieked.
He struggled to make sense of what he was seeing, and closed his eyes to shut out all of the things he didn’t understand. His thoughts cleared a little, and he seized with all of his willpower at the fragile promise of calm, even as the hulk’s talons ground into his waist, and the mandibles slipped against his magical scales. The pain jolted him into clarity. In pure desperation he stabbed blindly straight ahead with his sword and caught the monster in its mouth. It roared and let go of him; Geran hit the deck and fell, still helpless from its maddening gaze.
The creature raised both of its huge arms over its head, ready to crush Geran where he writhed. But then a searing jet of fire blasted the umber hulk. Sarth appeared thirty feet from the ship’s rail, hovering in midair as he scoured the creature with his sorcerer’s fire. “Desist, creature!” he shouted between the words of battle spells.
The umber hulk reeled away with a screech of pain, and abruptly Geran’s mind cleared again. The huge monster floundered across the deck, retreating from Sarth’s fire, and fetched up against the opposite rail. Geran picked himself up and charged the monster while it flailed under the sorcerer’s flame. He reversed his grip on his backsword, capped his left hand over the pommel, and then drove the blade up under the hulk’s jaws with all of his strength. The thing shuddered and then toppled over the rail, almost taking his sword with it. He wrenched it out of the carcass as it went over the side, and had to catch himself hastily on the rail. Then Sergen’s sword point sank into the back of his left shoulder, missing his heart only because the umber hulk had dragged him around as it fell. Geran cried out as the sharp steel grated on bone before he twisted away.