by Roland Green
But he had taken oath to Synsaga a year ago, and in that much time on the Crater Gulf only a fool failed to learn storm signs. The sticky stillness in the air, the thick but high clouds, and the odd note in the birdsong all said the same thing.
It would be a storm from the west, as the mountains tore at the winds. On shore there would be no more than rain, but a few hour’s rowing out to sea it would be a different and more deadly matter. Not as deadly as an easterly or northerly gale, however-there would be plenty of sea room for any ship able to run with the storm.
Gerik knew the perils of a lee shore as well as any seafarer now, though it would be years if ever before he was trusted with keeping a ship off one.
The one-armed sailor who acted as servant to the patients in the healers’ huts appeared in the doorway and coughed.
“Yers, sorr?”
Whatever had taken his arm had also taken most of his wits or speech or perhaps both. There was little magical healing of such wounds here, and Gerik had heard of men so hurt that they took their own lives or begged a mercy stroke from comrades. This man had not wished to die, however, and since he had taken his wounds in avenging the death of Synsaga’s sister Margiela, the pirate chief would have given him a golden throne had it been in his power.
Gerik looked at the bag, then took it from the old man and set it on the table. Everything he had brought into the huts was there, even the few brass coins and the silver tower. Of course, stealing among the pirates was punished in ways that made a sentence to the arena seem a slap on the wrist.…
“Naid barrers, sor?”
Gerik shook his head. He needed no one to help him navigate the path downhill to his quarters, let alone carry him. He lifted the bag and for a moment almost changed his mind; his leg was strong enough for unburdened walking, but running or carrying loads would take longer.
He rummaged out three of the brasses and handed them to the man. “More when I’ve made another voyage and have a share or two to spend.”
“Ach. End whan thet, sor?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d sworn oath only to Synsaga, which protected him ashore and allowed him a place aboard Golden Troll or Sea-cleaver. To the other captains, he was an Istarian of uncertain skill and no loyalty they were bound to recognize. Synsaga was two days overdue already, would not be making landfall in this storm, and might take more than the usual time repairing itself before going out again.
“Warrd?”
“Word of honor,” Gerik said. The man had done more for him than for the other five in the huts, though two of those were in no condition to demand much. One was dying of a gut wound from a brawl, another of some ailment doing vicious things inside his brain and requiring him to be strapped to his bed half the time. Even then, when the fits took him, his howls frightened birds and apes a league away.
Dignity forced Gerik to walk swiftly down the path until he was out of sight of the gate to the healing huts. By then he’d drawn blood from his lips at the pain of muscles pushed beyond their limits.
Must find some way of exercising them, he thought, where no one can see or hear until I’ve regained the lost ground.
He had been hard and fit for a man whose work was mostly counting timber in the city dockyards. Haimya would never have looked at him otherwise. But the pirates had a standard of fitness all their own, and it had taken six months for Gerik to reach it.
In that time he had gained muscle, lost fat and sweat, and come to understand just what Haimya must put herself through to keep her warrior’s body. Woman’s body, too-more than woman enough to disturb his thoughts, in ways that had no place on this slippery path.
Gerik put memories of Haimya from his mind and turned his attention to descending the slope. Out of sight of the huts and everyone else, he could slow his pace to one his muscles could endure. That took him to the most thickly grown part of the path just as the first thunder rolled in the west.
He looked up, eyes rising with the birds as they flew up screaming. The zenith was darker now than it had been, but not so dark that he missed a great black-winged shape soaring into view, then vanishing in the clouds. At least he thought he saw it, and he had been at least as sure the other three times as well.
He continued his descent. What had he seen, always briefly and today for hardly more than a blink as it plunged into the clouds? Long wings, a long tail, a crested head, all a black that seemed to swallow even the dim storm light.
No bird ever took that shape or grew so large. It seemed too large and the wrong shape for a griffon. That left only one possibility.
A black dragon. A creature of evil, a minion of Takhisis-and a thought cold enough to make a man forget the jungle heat for a moment.
The chill passed. A black dragon was also impossible. All the dragons, good and evil alike, had left the world after Huma wielded the dragonlance and died bringing victory to the forces of good. All were in dragonsleep, none to be waked except by the gods.
At least that was what Gerik Ginfrayson had heard. And he had heard that this came from wise men, clerics and wizards, who knew as much about the matter as mortal men could learn.
Either such men were wrong, or what Ginfrayson had seen passing overhead four times was not a dragon.
Another chill thought struck him. Synsaga’s little pirate village had no gods at its command, and was probably not even in the favor of many (save perhaps Hiddukel). But it had a renegade sorcerer, who received gold, slaves, food, and labor as though he were actually doing something useful for the pirates!
Had Fustiar the Renegade found a way to break dragonsleep?
If so, it was a secret to which Gerik would be years being admitted. But tongues wagged when the wine flowed freely, and Gerik could feign both drinking and drunkenness. The wine would flow freely when Synsaga returned, and Gerik could certainly enter that feast, with a sober head and receptive ears.
* * * * *
Pirvan dared not ask how he looked after Lady Eskaia’s entrance. He hardly needed to.
Both women took one look at him and burst into wild laughter. There was nothing ladylike or dignified about the laughter. They looked and sounded like two streetgirls who had just played a fine, profitable jest on a man.
Pirvan waited with as much dignity as he could manage while the women laughed themselves breathless. He thought of taking advantage of the unlocked door and the women’s distraction to escape. But to where? And how, seeing that he had neither decent garb nor weapons and that all in the house were likely awake and alert.
Also, if the women were not entirely out of their right senses-well, he had never wittingly struck a woman in his life, and was tolerably certain he had never gravely hurt one by chance. (Indeed, he was more sure of that than about having left behind no unlawful children.)
It was at this point that Pirvan noted that Lady Eskaia had put down on the floor-put down, the gods be praised, not dropped-a robust wooden platter loaded with cheese, bread, ham, pickles, ripe red grapes, and a bowl of something that looked appetizing even though Pirvan could not have said what it was.
For a moment he tried to maintain his dignity. Then the smell of the bread and the strong cheese reached his nostrils. It had been days since he’d eaten more than water and biscuits. He snatched up a piece of cheese in one hand, a piece of ham in the other, and crammed both of them in his mouth with neither the dignity nor even the manners of a child of five.
By the time Pirvan had started chewing, the women were no longer laughing. Their faces were an identical red, Lady Eskaia’s normally carefully arranged hair was a tangled mess, and Haimya seemed to have the hiccups. But they were in a state where a man might hope to ask a question and even, if he was sufficiently lucky and made the proper prayers to the right god, have it answered.
“Lady Eskaia, I am grateful for your hospitality and your presence,” Pirvan said. “As I made my promise in the hearing of you both, it will be kept. Remember, though, what I asked of you.”
<
br /> Eskaia touched her hair and grimaced as she realized the shambles she’d made of it. Then her jaw set. It was a well-shaped jaw, in which were set two rows of even white teeth. Had she been born a poor man’s daughter, she would still have been a much-sought marriage prize.
“Very well. But I must ask one further promise-indeed, an oath by all you hold most in honor. That you will never speak of what I am about to tell you, unless Haimya, I, or my father gives you leave.”
Josclyn Encuintras being suddenly brought into the matter briefly unsettled Pirvan. He sensed that what he was about to hear would unsettle him even more. But a promise was a promise; an honest thief could not live in a world where promises were not kept.
Pirvan swore himself to silence, invoking Gilean and Shinare, then looked at Eskaia. “My silver, your service.”
Haimya looked shocked. Eskaia stuck out her tongue at him. Then she sobered.
“It is a matter of what the pirates of Crater Gulf may be doing. Or, rather, what they may be having done for them …”
By the time Eskaia had finished (with a trifle of prompting from Haimya), Pirvan understood why her father was taking a hand in this matter. What might be happening in Crater Gulf could wreak havoc on Istar’s trade and even on the city itself. Josclyn was a leader of the merchants in their rivalry with the priests for supreme power in Istar.
Discovering and ending a menace to the city could bring more than honor or gold to House Encuintras. It could bring an offer of marriage to a high noble or even a royal heir for Eskaia.
Lucky man, Pirvan thought, then turned wits and tongue to more practical matters. Clearly father and daughter were speaking more openly to one another than the rumors said. Just as clearly, this was to his advantage. It endangered no secrets of the thieves, and put more of the resources of House Encuintras behind the voyage.
“I can see why you wish my company on this adventure,” Pirvan said. “I can go where neither of you can. But I did not promise to face the dangers that come with being-a spy, not to make hard an easy matter. A spy, among folk who are even harsher than most in dealing with such.”
“You will be paid, of course,” Eskaia said. “At least the wages of a chief guard, and perhaps more.”
“As well,” Pirvan said. “I returned the jewels gladly, but what they would have bought me must be paid somehow.”
“Why not more?” Haimya asked. “The price of one of the jewels-the full price, not what the night merchants would have given you-upon your return.”
Pirvan looked at the two women with increased respect. There was no foolishness in Haimya, and under the gown and finely done hair, hardly more in Eskaia. But then, a mercenary soldier and a merchant princess should hardly feel soiled by talking of money.
“Am I allowed to pick the jewel?”
“How can you be sure we will offer you the ones you took?” Eskaia replied.
“I will ask to see all of them. Also, one hundred towers now, to be subtracted from my payment.”
“Only that?” Haimya said.
Pirvan nodded. “I thought you might not care to be too generous to the thieves. I have neither wife nor children nor any living kin or sworn friends I know of, so that is all I will ask beforehand. Oh, that and my equipment.”
“The bag you were going to pull up into the cellar?” Haimya asked. Her smile was almost a grin.
“You have it?”
“Yes, although not without some strong words from-a comrade, I assume-lying below to cover your retreat.”
“It is well to know that he is unharmed. Had you shed his blood …” The grimness of his face took the smile off Haimya’s.
He let them change the subject after that. He did not know when they would be sailing, but if it was not tomorrow, he had a plan.
They were taking him north to help guard their backs. Why should he not enlist someone for this curious voyage, to do the same for him?
Chapter 6
Golden Cup loomed against the cloud-hazed sky above the skiff like a castle curiously set afloat. From her massive bulk, Pirvan thought she might better deserve the name Golden Kettle.
The breeze had risen since they had left the quay. The creaking of the timbers and the rigging almost drowned out the splash of the oars as they carried the skiff the last few yards to the gangway.
Pirvan slung his new seabag over his shoulder and looked forward, counting the other crates and bags among the feet of the rowers. He didn’t think they had orders to drop his gear overboard, but he intended to guard against both that and accidents as well.
The ship loomed higher in a darkness that seemed to have grown deeper. They were well out in the harbor now, where the largest ships anchored, waiting for a fair wind outbound or, if inbound, for space at the deep-water quays their draft required. The ship had no neighbors, and none of them were lit up except for the common bow, stern, and gangway lanterns.
The ship seemed all lumps and lines, and apart from its great size Pirvan could not have said much about it. He had never lived by the waterfront, where one could not take a five-minute stroll without seeing a dozen different ships. Lodgings there were apt to be cramped and noisy, and sailors and harborfolk in general not overly fond of men of his profession.
(It did not matter that they were hardly adverse to practicing it themselves, nor that Pirvan would never have stooped to robbing a working sailor. Neither would have saved him, if his luck was out, from a quick voyage to the bottom of the harbor with old shackles bound to his feet.)
“Ahoy, the boat!” split the night as someone on the gangway spotted them.
“Passenger for Golden Cup!” one of the rowers shouted.
“Come alongside and be recognized.”
Pirvan hoped that the ship was as well kept as it was big. Poor shipkeeping, worse seamanship or navigation, drunkenness, fire-all could prematurely end this voyage (which Pirvan rather hoped would succeed) as well as Pirvan’s life (which he intended to preserve for longer than House Encuintras had any use for it!)
The gangway rose as high as a two-story house, and the railing was higher than a man, solid timber, and loop-holed for archers. As Pirvan climbed the last steps, a splash and a curse rose from below.
He looked down. Someone had opened a port and emptied a bucket into the harbor, without looking out first. Some of the bucket’s contents had caught the boat and the second rower, who was handing cargo to the first rower and a sailor on the bottom of the gangway.
A large man was suddenly before Pirvan, but ignoring him. He leaned over the side.
“Hush your noise there, or you’ll have a bath afore you’re back to shore!”
The rower hushed, but the cargo came aboard remarkably quickly afterward. The man kept looking upward, as if wondering what might fall on him next.
The big man now turned to Pirvan.
“You’re Pirvan, with the Encuintras party?”
“The same.” Pirvan pulled a medallion out of his purse and showed it to the man. A lantern hanging from either side of the gangway gave just enough light to examine it.
“Well and good,” the man said with a grunt. “You’re being the last. Follow this boy to your cabin, and stow your baggage right quick. We’ll be upanchoring as soon as the last shore boat brings the drinkers.”
A boy of twelve or so had apparently sprouted from the deck at the big man’s wave. He looked Pirvan up and down with an unnerving maturity.
Probably wonders how much he can persuade me to give him, Pirvan thought.
“Baggage?”
“Over there,” Pirvan said, pointing. “Trunk with copper bands, crate with one red side, the green bag. I’ll carry this.”
The boy snatched up the bag and dashed toward-the stern, Pirvan thought. He followed as fast as he could, not without barking his shins on protrusions from the deck, stumbling, and hastily leaping out of the path of parties of sailors on urgent business.
There were enough people scurrying about the ship’s deck to gar
rison a castle. Pirvan wondered if the last few men were all that important, or if someone or something valuable was in the boat. Not greatly his to worry about, either, and if he stayed out on deck much longer, he would be as conspicuous and as unwelcome as a sober cleric at a drunkards’ revel.
Pirvan caught up with the boy well inside the aftercastle, which was on the same scale as everything else about the ship. Pirvan had stayed in smaller inns, and his cabin was a more comfortable accommodation than such inns often provided to even the fat-pursed traveler.
He could touch the walls while standing in the middle of it, but every bit of space was cunningly used. One side held stout racks for baggage; a second a small table with a washbasin and pitcher and more racks, with lockers under.
The third side held a bunk, with drawers under it, and above the bunk two sets of hooks. From one of them a hammock was already slung, with a blanket roll in it.
Pirvan was no stranger to hammocks, but if someone was going to yield the bunk without a word, no thief ever refused what was freely given. (Honest men were much the same, too.) He stretched out, more to give the boy room to work than because he was tired.
Intentions were one thing, the state of his body another. He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the boy was standing by the bunk, wrestling the trunk on to a rack and lashing it in place with a complicated harness of brass chain and leather thongs. It looked enough to drive an embroiderer to drink, but the boy made quick work of it.
Pirvan pulled out a copper ten-piece and tossed it to the boy. He snatched it out of the air, gaped, bit it, then grinned as his teeth told him he’d been offered genuine coin.
“Well, Master, that’s a good sign for our voyage together. We’ll be upanchoring before you need the head again, so snug yourself down and be easy.”
He was gone without another word, though he had said enough. More than enough to make Pirvan concerned that Grimsoar One-Eye might not have made it aboard, and that he would be sailing on this voyage with no friends and indeed no one aboard who would not toss him to the fish the moment his work was done. Of all the places on Krynn where it was easy to make murder look like an accident, a ship was notoriously the best.
