Shinthala grinned and looked around to determine where to send the spirit next.
Cursing, Anton peered at the ships around him. Even for a veteran sea warrior like himself it was difficult to locate his quarry amid the chaos of an engagement being fought over miles of water in the gloom of the overcast and the rain.
He could see a great deal. In some places, whales, sea serpents, and krakens still assailed the Turmishan fleet. In others, Turmishan and Umberlant vessels hurled flaming catapult shot, volleys of crossbow bolts, and shimmering bursts of magic at one another. Two ships had already come together, the deck of one of them packed with combatants. Every few moments, a body fell over the side.
But Anton couldn’t figure out which ship Evendur was aboard, and hadn’t been able to determine the Chosen’s location previously because the Octopus had only joined the pirate armada at the start of the day.
As far as he’d been able to tell, none of the reavers had regarded the ship’s tardy arrival as cause for concern. Why should they? They recognized Mourmyd Jacerryl’s vessel as one of their own, and they knew contrary winds and other hindrances could prolong any journey over water.
Anton hoped the familiar sight of the ship would fool Evendur just as effectively, and that would allow those aboard the Octopus to attack him by surprise. Because that was the only way to sneak up on him. Umara’s wizardry couldn’t veil something as big as a caravel.
Nor, Anton reflected, did it seem to be good for much else at the moment, even though she muttered and gestured away, her index finger writing runes in crimson glow on the air, her telltale red garb put aside for nondescript mannish garments of brown and gray. “Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“If anyone had told me that a Red Wizard of Thay couldn’t locate something as stuffed full of magic as the Chosen of a god …”
“The problem,” Umara growled, “is too much magic. Druids or waveservants on every ship, all praying at once … I’m doing the best I can.”
Anton found a smile for her. “I know. Sorry.”
“Turmishan galley off the port bow!” a man in the rigging bellowed.
Anton pivoted in that direction and saw that, indeed, a ship much like the one the Thayans had abandoned off Gulthandor was heading toward them. Worse, the oars were speeding it along fast enough that the Octopus couldn’t evade it. The wind had been blowing erratically as spellcasters on both sides struggled to bend it to their purposes, and at the moment, only a feeble breeze pushed at the caravel’s sails.
Anton didn’t want to fight Turmishans but had no way of convincing them that the crew aboard the Octopus was anything other than the motley band of corsairs they appeared to be. He turned to Umara. “Can you hold them back without hurting them?” he asked.
“Perhaps.” She pulled the rust-colored wand from her belt and swept it back and forth as she chanted rhyming couplets. Anton had the feverish feeling that he could almost see what the tip of the rod was sketching on the air. His vision seemed to splinter around each stroke.
Still, he didn’t know what she was conjuring until the long crimson creature with its piscine tail and body and horned, half-human face surfaced midway between the Octopus and the galley. Even then, he didn’t know exactly what it was, an accurate representation of some huge demon fish that swam the seas of the netherworld or simply a product of Umara’s imagination.
Whatever it was supposed to be, the phantom swam at the galley as fast as the Turmishan ship’s oarsmen pulled it through the waves. The creature’s fangs gnashed as though it couldn’t wait to start chewing through the hull.
Men on the galley cried out in alarm. An officer shouted commands. Anton grinned. But then another voice—a druid’s, mostly likely—shouted, “Ignore the beast! It isn’t real!” And with that, the huge fish with the demon face started to flicker, present one instant, absent the next.
Umara whispered words that made Anton feel as though he were choking. Her fingers clenched on the wand, and blood trickled down her wrist as if she were gripping a blade.
The flickering stopped. The demon fish veered left an instant before it would have collided with the galley’s ram and sped on down the vessel’s starboard side. The gnashing fangs, its momentum, or a combination of the two, snapped off one oar after another.
The creature hadn’t quite finished when the druid bellowed words that made it vanish and stay vanished. But by then, the galley was crippled. Anton judged that even a puny breeze would enable the Octopus to leave her behind before the Turmishans collected their wits and ran out replacement oars.
He turned to Umara and asked, “But it was an illusion?”
Breathing hard, she smiled. “Some illusions are more illusory than others.”
“Evidently. Nice work.” As the Octopus left the galley in its wake, he resumed his peering. And then he spotted a ship, small in the distance but still impressive to knowledgeable eyes, to the northeast.
She was impressive because she was a galleon. The large ships with their long beaks and lateen-rigged mizzenmasts were rare on the Sea of Fallen Stars, and no captain from Pirate Isle commanded one. Some coastal lord—an Impilturian, judging from the lines of the vessel—especially eager to curry favor with the church of Umberlee must have sent her when the waveservants put out the call for reinforcements.
Anton pointed. “That’s Evendur.”
“How can you tell?” Umara replied.
“You met the arrogant son of a hag. Can you imagine him commanding anything other than the biggest, grandest ship in his fleet?”
The wizard smiled. “When you put it that way, no.”
“Neither can I.” Anton raised his voice. “We’re going after the galleon off the port bow!”
A sailor frowned. “With the wind the way it is, it could take all day to catch her if we can do it at all.”
“I’m a pirate,” Anton replied. “Catching other ships is my trade. You Thayans just do what I tell you.” He ran toward the stern to take the helm.
Evendur Highcastle grinned as he watched a Turmishan caravel whose masts and sails were masses of fire. Some artilleryman shooting burning shot or bowmen loosing flaming arrows had managed to set them ablaze despite the rain, and now the ship was doomed.
Or so he assumed. But then he felt magic stirring on the caravel as some druid completed a spell, and all that flame rose higher into the air, clear of the rigging, and flowed into the form of a gigantic yellow hawk. The elemental spirit looked around, and then, with a beat of its wings, hurtled not at the pirate ship that had set the caravel on fire—that vessel had evidently moved on to seek another fight—but at Evendur’s own galleon the Fury. Crewmen cried out in alarm.
Evendur spoke to the sea and told it to manifest a spirit of its own. Gray-green water heaved and became a colossal squid, which then snatched for the hawk with whipping tentacles.
Steam burst into being as water and fire came together. The burning spirit ripped with its beak and claws. But still, the squid dragged it out of the sky and then beneath the waves. Clinging to life, the hawk continued glowing for a breath or two, and then the light went out.
That left the spellcaster who’d dared to send the fire elemental against Evendur’s own vessel. The undead pirate focused his will on the portion of the sea under the caravel and raised it up like a hill. The Turmishan ship slid down the swell and capsized.
And just for an instant, Evendur felt lightheaded. He gripped the rail to steady himself, and the pressure made liquescence slough away from the firmer flesh underneath.
That instant of shakiness was a reminder that he’d been using his magic freely, and even the might of a Chosen had limits. Now that it was too late, he realized he could probably have killed the druid on the caravel with more finesse. As opposed to squandering the power necessary to destroy an entire crippled ship that, except for the spellcaster onboard, was unlikely to play any further role in the battle.
But Evendur h
ad been annoyed. Because, while he had no doubt he’d win the conflict in the end, nothing was happening as he expected.
For starters, he hadn’t anticipated fighting this fight at all. The Turmishans weren’t supposed to know he was coming. Still, it hadn’t dismayed him to watch them sailing and rowing out of the east, because his fleet was bigger.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t proving to be an insurmountable advantage because some of the ships under his command had proved reluctant to engage the enemy. Pirates liked to think of themselves as fearless masters of the sea, but in fact, they commonly survived by attacking vulnerable targets and avoiding dangerous foes like the Turmishan navy, and maybe some were still operating according to the same principle. And perhaps the sailors from Westgate, Lyrabar, and the other coastal ports resented being ordered to fight on the side of the same corsairs they’d always considered murdering scum. Maybe, unlike the nobles who’d sent them, some had heard the Lathanderian message and doubted Umberlee’s supremacy.
The situation wasn’t as bad as it could be. As far as Evendur could tell, none of his ships had fled or surrendered. Even the reluctant ones fought when a Turmishan vessel forced the issue. But a number seemed to be hanging back in the hope that Umberlant magic would carry the day.
Evendur despised them for their lack of zeal. But he had to admit theirs was a reasonable expectation. The waveservants, after all, were fighting at sea and in their goddess’s holy cause. What else should they need to make them invincible?
But even that wasn’t playing out in the straightforward manner it should. The druids’ control of natural forces allowed them to resist the magic of the sea, and the Emerald Enclave was a notoriously warlike religious order, constantly taking up arms against loggers, settlers, and other despoilers of their sacred forests. Whereas some of Umberlee’s clergy were battle-seasoned, but others were not.
Evendur’s own mystical strength would still have tipped the scales, except that the Turmishans had brought a Chosen of their own. He could feel the presence of his counterpart like the idea of a mighty oak, rooted and massive, looming somewhere ahead.
He needed to kill Silvanus’s Chosen, and then, surely, the Turmishan defense would crumble. Striving for a more precise awareness of the elder druid’s location, he concentrated, and some burgeoning faculty inside him pointed like the needle of a compass.
He ordered the Fury onto the proper heading, and, barking a word of command, jerked the wind back into her sails when some other spellcaster sought to redirect it for his own purposes. A Turmishan ship changed course to intercept the galleon, but fortunately, he had sahuagin swimming around her like outriders, and when he spoke to them in their own snarling, burbling tongue, magic carried the sound to their ears.
The shark men converged on the enemy vessel and, dropping the tridents that would otherwise have hindered their climbing, swarmed up the sides to attack with fang and claw. It was a suicidal assault, but it kept the Turmishans busy while the Fury passed by, and shortly afterward, the ship of the Treefather’s Chosen emerged from the grayness and the rain.
Unlike Evendur’s vessel, she wasn’t a galleon or a grand galley, either, just a caravel. Still, she was plainly a formidable warship, not that it would help her now.
For now was the time for all the brutal, sudden, overwhelming strength that Evendur could muster. He roared a word of power and shook his boarding axe at the caravel. A wave reared up behind her, taller than her mainmast, then crashed down on top of her. The water felt like his own prodigious hand, first trying to swat the ship to splinters, then to grab whatever was left, roll it over, and drag it to the bottom.
But to his irritation, the magic of the enemy Chosen opposed him. He hadn’t caught his foe by surprise. Druidic power attenuated the force of his blow and weakened his grip. When the attack ended, the caravel was still floating upright.
He knew why. For an instant, he’d sensed two additional Chosen of Silvanus. They were ashore somewhere but still lending power to their ally.
Yet even so, that first attack had nearly succeeded, and he saw no reason to allow his foe time to recover the strength to withstand another. Seeking the Treefather’s Chosen, he studied the enemy ship.
The small man in armor that looked like a coat of leaves was almost certainly an accomplished druid. But it was the woman beside him, white-haired but still straight-backed and sturdy-looking, who was plainly Chosen; Evendur could feel the spark of divine power smoldering inside her. Glaring at her, hissing a curse in one of the secret tongues of Umberlee’s worshipers, he willed her lungs to fill with water. Nearly invisible in the rain, a streak of shimmer stabbed at her.
But the magic missed by a finger length. It was like the druidess wasn’t truly standing where she appeared to be. If so, a spell of clear sight might wipe away the deception.
But before Evendur could start casting one, she raised a bronze sickle over her head, and ghostly red flowers bloomed around her like a picture frame. She slashed the curved blade down and bellowed, “Oakfather!” Somehow, the shout was also an ear-splitting thunderclap, and at the same instant that she roared it, the world blazed white, and the undead pirate shuddered in burning agony.
Silvanus’s Chosen had struck him with lightning! He recognized the pain and spastic paralysis from when the two Red Wizards had used the same force against him, but their efforts had been puny compared to what the white-haired druidess had called down from the sky.
When the pain released him, he found himself sprawled on broken planking, in some danger of dropping through into the hold beneath. His ears rang, and patches of his putrid flesh were burned black and smoking. His high-collared sea-green cape was on fire.
Clambering to his feet, he stripped the burning garment off his shoulders and waved it like a flag for the druidess to see. Because he suspected her mastery of lightning was her deity’s special gift to her and her greatest weapon. And he wanted her to know right away that it wasn’t enough to stop him.
Meanwhile, catapults arced projectiles back and forth, some ablaze, some balls of cold stone and iron. Ballistae and springalds shot their darts, archers their shafts, and crossbowmen their bolts.
Some missiles found their marks. Wood crunched, and men fell thrashing and screaming. But many missed. The rain had soaked hemp and flax strings and sinew cords to the detriment of both range and accuracy.
Evendur realized he didn’t mind. As magic hadn’t decided the fight and artillery and bows weren’t getting the job done, either, he’d just have to do it by leading a boarding party onto the enemy ship and hacking down its defenders with axe and cutlass. And why not? That was the pirate way.
He bellowed his orders, and other voices relayed them the length of the galleon, to the mix of reavers, soldiers of the church, and Impilturian sailors who now made up the crew. The helmsman adjusted the ship’s course.
Boulders fell like the rain, ripping sails, cracking into spars, breaking cordage, and crashing onto the deck, a few smashing men to pulp and spatters in the course of their descents. The conjured barrage was another worthy effort on the part of the druids, but once again, not devastating enough to arrest the Fury’s forward progress, especially when Evendur didn’t really even need the rigging. If necessary, the sea alone would sweep the ships together.
Still, he hated having bits of his splendid new vessel battered into kindling, and he retaliated by bellowing Umberlee’s name and spinning his boarding axe in a circle. The water under the caravel copied the motion, churning into a whirlpool that spun the Turmishan vessel and shook a crewman and a catapult over the side.
As Evendur would have wagered, the druids managed to quell the maelstrom before it capsized the caravel or dragged it under. But the quelling took time, and when they finished, their ship no longer had any hope of keeping away from its foe. The crew scrambled madly to prepare to repel boarders; the whirlpool had shaken and tumbled any previous arrangements into disarray.
The Fury’s archers and crossbo
wmen obliged them to do it under a hail of shafts and quarrels. And as the two vessels came side-by-side, other pirates threw grappling hooks then hauled on the lines that now bound the ships together.
Because the galleon stood higher that the caravel, some boarders would slide down those ropes. Evendur, however, simply leaped before the corsairs pulling on the ropes had even finished their task.
His strength carried him across the gap, and he thumped down on the caravel’s quarterdeck. For this moment, he was alone, every one of his followers left behind on the galleon, and his enemies would never have a better chance to attack him. But, goggle-eyed, the closest Turmishans froze.
No doubt someone had warned them what to expect, but even so, Evendur’s appearance—hulking, slimy-rotten, the lightning burns surely only adding to the horror of it—had balked them. Laughing, reveling anew in the gifts the Queen of the Depths had given him, he struck left and right, cleaving the skulls of two dark-skinned mariners with square-cut black beards.
That jolted the remaining Turmishans on the quarterdeck into motion. But at the same instant, timbers groaned as the two hulls bumped and ground together, and the first of Evendur’s crew jumped and swarmed after him.
He let the newcomers handle the Turmishans left in the stern. He had a white-haired old woman to kill, and he gazed out over the main deck to determine her current location.
Once Anton managed to maneuver the Octopus squarely astern of the galleon, the same strong, steady wind that Evendur had likely called up to speed his own vessel aided the one behind her as well. The reaver called the Thayan helmsman back to his post and trotted to rejoin Umara in the bow. She scowled at the ship ahead.
“Ready?” he asked.
She snorted. “Are you? Back in Sapra, the fact that neither of us has ever managed to hurt Evendur Highcastle very badly failed to persuade me that we should stay well away from him henceforth. Now, however … well, let’s just say I’m still game, but I see both sides of the argument.”
The Reaver Page 31
