They were coming already. He could hear footfalls on the underside of the squid ship's hull.
Could he use the cloak to see them, to learn how they were planning the assault? He closed his eyes, let his mind expand to include the cloak at his back, and felt his thoughts expand throughout the ship.
The mental link was fitful, intermittent. The squid ship was dying, as far as the cloak was concerned, but it wasn't dead quite yet. Through a gray, flickering haze Teldin saw the nautiloid's hull and the vessel's crew streaming over the bow and onto the underside of the Boundless, fifteen of them, twenty, twenty-five…
But they were humans, not the illithids he'd expected! Teldin's surprise broke the mental link, and he was unable to reclaim it.
Humans! That made things more hopeful-at least his crew wouldn't be facing creatures that could fry their brains with mental blasts.
But what were humans doing aboard an illithid nautiloid? he asked himself. So many of them, and seemingly eager to go into battle-infinitely more eager than slaves would be. He forced the question aside. If he and his crew didn't win the upcoming battle, it wouldn't matter at all.
So, no illithids-or, at least, none who'd yet put in an appearance. But there were still twenty-five-no, thirty, now--hard-bitten mercenary types, armed with swords, axes, and maces, clambering across the hull. Maybe the enemy didn't need mind-blasting monsters.
Teldin heard a cry of alarm from the starboard rail. One of his crewmen thrust with his boarding pike and was rewarded by a scream from over the side. Battle is joined, he told himself.
For the first two minutes, the squid ship's crew was able to block all efforts by the nautiloid's mercenaries to climb onto the deck. It couldn't last, however.
"They're on the afterdeck!" one of Teldin's crew shouted. The Cloakmaster looked aft. There were four attackers clambering over the aft rail. Apparently they'd given up a direct assault as too risky and, instead of staying on the hull, had climbed onto the port spanker fin, and from there to the upper portion of the stern.
"With me!" Teldin cried. Flanked by Djan and two other crewmen, he charged up the ladder to the sterncastle.
The first of the boarding party over the stern rail was a huge, black-haired man wielding a crescent-bladed hand axe. With a snarl, he swung a whistling cut at Teldin's head. The Cloakmaster ducked under the swing and drove the point of his sword into the attacker's chest. He spun to the right to parry a sword thrust from another attacker and riposted quickly, laying open the man's left shoulder. Then, as the man howled, Teldin ran him through and pushed him backward, to fall clear of the ship. Teldin turned and looking for another foe.
Djan and the other crewmen had put paid to the remainder of the attackers, not without cost, however. One of the sailors was down, blood pooling around him from a gaping head wound, and Djan was bleeding from a nasty gash in his right forearm.
Teldin heard cries and the skirl of steel on steel from behind him. He spun.
Attackers had made it over the squid ship's rail and were among the defenders. Their boarding pikes useless in toe-to-toe battle, Teldin's crewmen were laying about them wildly with short swords, axes, hammers, even belaying pins, any kind of weapon they could find.
"We'll lose this," Djan said quietly.
Teldin felt the chill of space invading his bones. "I know it." Suddenly he clapped the half-elf on the shoulder. "Do what you can here," he ordered. "I've got an idea."
Djan didn't ask any questions. Beckoning to the surviving crewman, he charged down the ladder to the main deck and into the fray.
The first mate was right, Teldin knew. There was no way they'd be able to hold off the attackers. The squid ship's crew would be butchered, and the cloak would fall into the hands of whoever captained the nautiloid, unless the Cloak-master did something soon.
All right. Static defense wasn't the answer. He had to take the fight to the nautiloid's captain, and he thought he knew how. It was a risk-he had no idea how many of the attackers knew the details of their captain's plans-but any risk was better than the certain defeat of staying aboard the Boundless.
He forced himself to ignore the singing of steel, the crying of wounded men. He let an image build in his mind: a broad, flat-nosed face, a heavy-set body, short black hair… Dargeth, the half-orc. In his mind's eye, he superimposed the image over his own face and body. His skin tingled as he felt the cloak make the change.
He drew a deep breath and returned the short sword to its scabbard. Here goes, he told himself.
He swung a leg over the aft rail and lowered himself onto the slightly upswept surface of the squid ship's stern. Arms spread for balance, he dropped onto the curved wood surface of the port spanker fin. The surface of the fin was almost perfectly aligned with the squid ship's gravity plane, he knew. He lowered himself to his knees, then to his belly. Cautiously, he crawled to the forward edge of the fin.
From this vantage point, he could see a dozen mercenaries standing-upside down, according to his present orientation-on the underside of the Boundless's hull, preparing to climb down to the gravity plane, then up the other side to the rails. Preparing to board and kill my crew, Teldin told himself bitterly. His hand strayed to his sword hilt, as he fought the temptation to leap into their midst and hew about him wildly.
But, no, he told himself firmly, that wouldn't help in the long run. No matter how good he was with a sword, no matter how lucky, there was no possible way he could take down a dozen armed mercenaries. He'd just get himself killed or captured, and then he'd have no way of saving his men from their fate. No, the only way he could help them was to follow through with his plan.
He slid himself forward along the fin until his shoulders and chest extended out into space, then he bent forward, down, over the edge of the fin.
As soon as his head and shoulders passed through the plane of the fin, he wasn't looking down anymore, but up. His balance spun dizzily as his brain tried to make sense of conflicting data. The gravity plane passed through the middle of his body now, with "local down" being toward the plane of the spanker fin. He closed his eyes and struggled to fight the nausea that twisted within him.
He had to move fast, he knew. He bent farther, until his chest touched the other flat surface of the fin. Now he was folded around the forward edge of the fin. He pulled himself forward with his hands and kicked his legs out into space. Again his balance reoriented itself sickeningly. He tasted bile in his throat. He slid forward again until he lay flat on the fin-on what had been the underside of the fin but was now, to his senses, the top. He jumped to his feet.
From his new vantage point, the Boundless looked as though it had capsized. The nautiloid, its ram still buried in the squid ship's hull, appeared the right way up-thanks to its final maneuver before impact-but angled upward at fifteen or twenty degrees. He ran to the illithid ship's open lower battle station and vaulted over the rail, onto its canted deck.
Three mercenaries faced him, weapons drawn and faces grim.
For a second, Teldin's sense of vulnerability was almost more than he could stand. He wanted to snatch his sword from its sheath and at least go down fighting. Instead he kept his hand clear of the weapon's hilt and forced a look of urgency onto his face. "Where's the captain?" he grunted.
One of the mercenaries tightened his grip on his sword and stepped forward. I'm dead, the Cloakmaster told himself. They don't know who Dargeth is and don't know his significance. All I've done is kill myself.
Then another of the mercenaries grabbed the man by the shoulder, pulled him back. "No," he grunted, "he's with us."
Relief flooded through Teldin's body, threatening to weaken his knees so that he couldn't even stand. With a titanic effort, he kept his face and traitor body under control. "Where's the captain?" he repeated.
"Grampian's on the bridge deck," the first mercenary said, pointing vaguely upward. "Why d'ya need to talk to him?"
"News," Teldin replied, keeping his voice hoarse, exhausted-sounding, i
n case these men had heard Dargeth speak before. "For Grampian's ears only." He held his breath, waiting for another question-a question he couldn't answer, that would reveal his deception and end his life.
But the mercenaries had other things on their minds. They paid him no more attention as they brushed past him to vault over the rail, onto the underside of the Boundless.
Teldin's knees felt weak, his heart pounding so hard that it threatened to burst. Still he managed to force himself on, up the sloping deck of the battle station. There were three ladders-one, in the center of the deck, leading down-, two leading up. The mercenary had pointed upward when he'd mentioned the captain's-Grampian's-location. The Cloakmaster sprinted up the starboard side ladder.
He found himself in a large, open area that filled the complete width of the nautiloid. To his right, as he reached the top of the ladder, was the ship's main catapult, smashed by the Boundless's ballista shot. Two human bodies, twisted and broken, lay sprawled over the wreckage. The Cloakmaster looked away.
The area was empty. Directly ahead of him were another two ladders, these wider than the one he'd climbed, one leading up, the other down. To the port side of the ladders was a door; to the starboard was a corridor leading aft. There had to be cabins back there, maybe storage compartments.
Where in the Abyss would he find the captain? He didn't have time to search the whole ship. His crewmates were dying….
Where would he be if he were the captain? Somewhere he could see what was going on, of course. That eliminated the cabins, didn't it? He ran to the ladders and climbed up to the next deck.
More than halfway up the shell-like hull of the nautiloid, this deck was considerably shorter and slightly narrower than the one below. But it was much higher, extending right up to the curved upper surface of the hull. Above him, like the galleries in some strange theater, were observation decks of some kind. And, even higher, a kind of narrow causeway extended from the aft to the center of the open space, supporting a large chair. Teldin stopped in his tracks, fascinated by the spectacle.
"What in the hells are you doing here?"
He spun. Facing him across the open deck, a dark, bearded man stood, fists balled and set aggressively on his hips.
By all the gods, it was Berglund, the privateer captain who'd attacked the Boundless outside Heartspace!
Teldin struggled to keep his recognition from showing on his face. "Gotta talk to Grampian," he gasped harshly.
Berglund scowled. "Why?"
"It's important," Teldin grunted. "Where?"
Berglund hesitated, and the Cloakmaster thought all was lost, then the pirate's face cleared and he pointed toward a circular, red-glass portal on the starboard side of the hull. "Out on the observer station."
Teldin grunted his thanks and hurried over to the portal. Just aft of the large, multipaned porthole was a small door. He grabbed the knob and pulled it open.
And there was Grampian (or so he assumed), a tall, nondescript, brown-haired man with a build slightly more slender than Teldin's. He stood on a small, semicircular gallery -open to the stars-leaning on the rail for a good view of the underside of the squid ship's hull. Apparently he was too absorbed in what was going on below him to have noticed Teldin's arrival.
Silently, the Cloakmaster stepped out onto the observation gallery and shut the door behind him. He drew his short sword, felt the sharkskin grip slick with the sweat of his palm. He took a step forward….
Suddenly he was struck by a vision. Superimposed on the tall human ahead of him he saw an even taller figure-gangling, slender to the point of malnutrition, standing twice Teldin's own height. Instead of brown hair, he saw a bald skull, strangely domed, covered with tightly stretched powder-blue skin…
An arcane.
Chapter Fourteen
The Cloakmaster must have gasped or made some other sound as the realization struck him; or maybe the arcane that called itself Grampian had otherwise sensed a presence behind it. In any case, it turned, its magically disguised face twisting into an expression of shock.
Teldin hurled himself across the intervening space, simultaneously releasing the magic of the cloak and returning to his true form. He drove a shoulder into Grampian's chest, slamming the figure back against the rail. Viciously, he grabbed the "man's" shoulder with his left hand and spun him around. Then he locked his left forearm around the figure's throat, drove a knee into the small of his back, and wrenched backward. Grampian gasped, a high-pitched whistling hiss, as Teldin arched its spine backward like a bow. The Cloakmaster settled the point of his short sword over where he guessed the creature's kidney might be, and pressed just hard enough to break the skin. "Call them off!" he hissed into Grampian's ear.
"It's you!" the magically disguised arcane cried, its voice pitched high with terror. "The cloak bearer!"
Teldin applied more pressure to the sword, feeling its point penetrate another fraction of an inch into Grampian's back. Pain jolted the body he held. "Call your men off!" he repeated. He felt his lips draw back from his teeth in a terrible, feral snarl. "Now!"
"How did… ?" the creature started.
But the Cloakmaster cut the arcane off by driving his knee into its back a second time. "I'll kill you," he snarled, his voice cold and low, terrifying to his own ears. "Call them back or you're dead."
Teldin was expecting some kind of resistance and was surprised when the arcane immediately bellowed, "Return to the ship! Cease the attack!" Looking down, the Cloakmaster saw the mercenaries still on the squid ship's hull hesitate for a moment, then obediently start climbing back aboard the nautiloid. At first he was heartily surprised at how easily they accepted the order. But, then, Why not? he asked himself. They're mercenaries; it's only their fight as long as their employer says it's their fight.
Behind him Teldin heard the door burst open. He spun, holding Grampian in front of him like a living shield.
"You!" Berglund stood in the doorway, sword drawn. He stared at Teldin, his face pale. "By all the fiends, what are you doing here?"
"Drop the sword, Berglund," Teldin shouted. "It's over." He twisted the sword and felt Grampian's muscles spasm with pain. "Tell him!"
"It is over," the disguised arcane echoed hurriedly. "Drop your weapon."
He watched Berglund's eyes and saw the thoughts flash through the pirate captain's mind-saw him make his decision. The short sword clattered to the deck. Berglund kicked it toward Teldin's feet. "Get down there, Berglund," the Cloakmaster told him harshly. "Get your men back here. And bring my first mate over." He tightened his grip on Grampian's throat, hearing the arcane gasp and choke under the pressure. "And don't think of trying any tricks. Tell him, Grampian."
"No tricks," Grampian gasped. "Do what he says. We must reach… an arrangement."
*****
They sat in the nautiloid's main saloon, a large compartment at the aft end of the bridge deck. Teldin was there, with Djan, the wounded Anson, and Grampian-now in his true form, having let his magical disguise dissipate. The surviving members of the squid ship's crew-only six of them, not counting the two men present-were aboard the Boundless. Grampian had ordered his mercenaries to confine themselves to the cabins on the lower "slave" deck of the nautiloid, and they seemed willing enough to follow their employer's orders.
Teldin frowned. He didn't feel fully comfortable. The mercenaries outnumbered his surviving crew by more than four to one. And Berglund, he knew, was a wily man. The only thing that the Cloakmaster had going for him at the moment was "Grampian"-or whatever the creature's real name was-and the fact that Djan had a crossbow leveled at the blue-skinned giant's skull from point-blank range. The saloon had only one door, which meant the mercenaries couldn't get to them without giving plenty of time to… encourage… the arcane to call off his sellswords. Berglund could, conceivably, set up some kind of standoff, trading Teldin's crew's lives for the arcane-and if he did, Teldin knew he'd have to surrender. But he didn't think the arcane would countenance that kind o
f risk to its own precious blue skin, and he tried to tell himself that Berglund didn't have enough personal stake in the matter to initiate something like that.
The Cloakmaster forced his doubts aside. He'd worry about those things if they came to pass. Right now he had to concentrate on the present: there were some things he had to know.
Teldin stared into the arcane's small, watery eyes. Even with the creature seated, he still had to look up into its face. "Who are you?" Teldin asked quietly.
With its magical disguise dropped, its voice had a high, fluting tone to it. "My name is T'k'Ress," the creature said emotionlessly. "I understand you met my… "-it hesitated-"my brother, you might say, T'k'Pek."
Teldin raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. T'k'Pek was the name of the arcane he'd met aboard the Nebulon, a cylindrical ship in orbit around Toril, before the creature had been killed by the neogi. Interesting, he thought. "Why?" he asked.
The arcane's voice remained emotionless, though its expression seemed to indicate tolerant amusement. "The cloak, why else?" T'k'Ress answered. "I wish you to understand, Teldin Moore," it continued, "that there is nothing personal in this. My interest in the cloak is purely business, my acts motivated purely by business necessities."
Teldin wanted to spit. "That's what your hired dog Berglund said," he snarled, "after he killed my crew."
T'k'Ress extended a six-fingered hand, palm up. "The deaths are regrettable," it said quietly. "Would that they were not necessary."
"But you'd do anything to get the gods-damned cloak, wouldn't you?" With an effort, Teldin fought his rage back to more manageable proportions.
The arcane pivoted its shoulder girdle, a strange gesture that Teldin tentatively interpreted as its version of a shrug. "If the truth be told, I have little interest in the cloak as such," it said levelly. "I cannot speak for others of my race, but I would expect them to share my outlook."
Teldin stared at the creature. "What?"
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