without being spotted.
“Backtrack and go around?” he wondered aloud. “Or wait until it gets dark and then ride by on the trail?” He decided he preferred to ride past if he could. It should be safe enough if the pirates didn’t send out any foraging parties, but any way he looked at it, he’d be riding long after sundown and making a late camp with no fire. He scowled at the thought. The presence of a corsair ship only twenty miles from his home was not a good sign. Piracy had been bad this year, growing worse with each passing month. Hulburg’s ships were harried all over the Moonsea. Now here was another cargo that wouldn’t reach Hulburg’s storehouses. It would be a heavy blow to the Sokols and to the harmach’s coffers too.
He dismounted, looping his horse’s reins around a bleached pine stump amid the boulders. As long as he was waiting for nightfall, he might as well see if he could learn anything useful about the corsairs plundering ships on Hulburg’s doorstep. Picking his way down the slope to find a better vantage point, he eventually settled under the branches of a wind-sculpted thicket of gorse about fifty yards up the hillside from the strand and studied the scene more carefully.
The pirates were mostly humans, with a mix of other folk-a dwarf or two, some goblins, even one ogre that he could see. They had the Sokol ship’s cargo scattered all over the beach, sorting out what was worth taking and what they’d leave behind. Geran couldn’t see any of the merchant’s crew, but that didn’t surprise him. Most likely the pirates had killed them after capturing the ship and dumped the corpses over the side.
He chewed his lower lip, thinking. He’d do something about it if he could, but for the moment it was no real business of his. It was only an accident of fate that he was in the vicinity at all. He’d spent the last few days visiting his mother, who resided in a Selunite convent in Thentia, and was on his way back to Hulburg. It was usually an uneventful journey, since no one lived along the coastland between Thentia and Hulburg, and most traffic between the two cities went by sea. There wasn’t even much reason for highwaymen or marauders from the wilds of Thar to come this way.
“They probably chose this cove just for that reason,” he said to himself. They needed a quiet place where they could sort through their plunder, and they weren’t likely to be troubled here. He couldn’t do much about the Sokol ship now, but at least he could carry news of the attack to Hulburg and let the Sokols know what had happened to their ship. He settled in to study the pirates and their vessel closely while he waited for the sun to set. The pirate vessel was a three-masted war galley, a ship that would be equally handy under sail or oar. Geran couldn’t make out any name from where he was hiding, but the figurehead was clear-a mermaidlike creature whose fishy tail was instead a mass of kraken arms. He’d never seen anything like it. There couldn’t be too many ships on the Moonsea with that device.
As the sun set, the pirates built a bonfire on the beach and broke out casks of wine taken from their prize. Geran judged that it was dark enough to make his way back up to where he’d left his horse. But just as he was about to crawl out from under the gorse, he heard a scream. From behind the hull of the pirate ship, two crewmen dragged a young woman in a fine, blue dress with a bodice of dove gray into sight and roughly tied her to the pirate vessel’s kedging anchor up on the beach. She’d been hidden on the far side of the ship from Geran’s vantage point. One of the ruffians knotted his hand in the woman’s long, golden hair, pressed his bearded face against hers, and forced a kiss. Then he reached up with his other hand and stripped her to the waist, tearing away her bodice. She snarled at him and struggled to get free, but her hands were bound behind her back. The pirate laughed and sauntered away. Geran started to draw his blade and surge from his hiding place, but he forced himself to stop and consider his actions. If he acted rashly, he could get both himself and the woman killed.
“Ah, damn it all,” Geran muttered. “Now what do I do?” A moment ago there would have been no shame in slipping away and making sure the tale of the Sokol ship’s fate reached Hulburg. He wouldn’t have lost a moment’s sleep over leaving a scene where the murders had already taken place. But it was all too clear what a beautiful woman unfortunate enough to have been a passenger on the wrong ship could expect in the pirates’ camp. If he rode off and abandoned her to her fate, he’d hear her screams in his conscience for a long time. He had to do
It’ll have to be stealth, he realized. Or a diversion of some kind. I need something to take their attention away from her long enough to cut her free and spirit her away. And the longer I wait, the better-they’ll get themselves falling-down drunk if I give them the chance. But how long will they wait before they turn their attention on the woman? And are there other captives I haven’t seen yet?
Geran waited impatiently, watching from his hiding place. The pirates tapped another cask and drank eagerly, roaring with laughter and admiring their spoils. Several times he tensed and prepared to burst out of his place of concealment when one or another of the crewmen approached the woman, but each time the pirate retreated. Finally Geran decided that the master of the pirate ship must have been saving her for himself. She was certainly pretty enough. She slumped with her chin down, held upright by the lashings that bound her to the anchor. He wondered who she was and how she’d come to be on the ship.
Finally, he judged that the moment was as right as it would ever be. It was possible that more of the pirates would drink themselves into a stupor if he waited longer, but the leader might appear and rape or kill the woman at any time. Besides, Geran could see a silver glimmer to the southeast that hinted at a big, bright moon. Scowling at the foolishness of his own conscience, he slipped out of the brush and darted down to the water’s edge. There was no surf to speak of, just small wavelets less than a foot tall. Wading out into the cold darkness until he was thigh- deep in water, he crouched down and began to creep toward the stern of the Sokol ship, which still jutted out a fair distance from the shore. The pirate vessel might be better for what he had in mind, but it was farther away, and he didn’t want too many enemies between him and his horse if things went poorly.
The Moonsea was never warm even in the middle of summer; on a clear, dark, autumn evening, it was bitterly cold. Geran’s teeth chattered, and he shivered from toe to crown. But the water provided the best avenue toward his goal without crossing the open, firelit beach. The pirates’ shouts and coarse jests rang out over the water, filling the cove with their callousness. After wading a short distance, he reached the stern of the Sokol ship, and paused to listen closely. He could hear muffled thumps, gruff voices, and planks creaking; at least a few of the pirates still searched the holds of the merchant ship, but he didn’t think he heard anyone up on the deck. As stealthily as he could, Geran clambered up the ship’s side toward the quarterdeck and risked a quick look. No one was in sight.
He swung himself over the rail and moved back to the ship’s sternlamp. It was a big lantern of wrought iron, suspended from a short pole fixed to the rail. He pulled it down and glanced inside; oil sloshed in the reservoir. He poured it out on the deck then splashed some on the rigging lines and the furled sail of the mizzenmast close by. From the caravel’s quarterdeck he could see the pirates’ bonfire on the beach. Several men were gathered around their captive, leering and pawing at her. She’s almost out of time, he realized.
Kneeling by the oil he’d poured out on the deck, Geran focused his mind into the clear, still calm necessary for spell-casting. He whispered words in Elvish he’d learned years ago in Myth Drannor:
“The prize!” someone shouted. “She’s burning!”
Geran glided away from the burning ship as quickly as he could, hoping that none of the pirates would think to look for an enemy creeping away in the water. He heard more shouts behind him and risked a quick look; men on the beach leaped to their feet and dashed for the grounded Sokol ship. Others stood staring in dumb amazement until their officers cuffed them into action. “Put it out! Put it out, you dogs!” they shouted. Fire was the one thing that sailors feared more than anything else, for there were a thousand things on a ship that burned well given the chance. If there had been a strong wind blowing, Geran might have hoped for the flames to spread to the other vessel, but even without that, it seemed that the fire was doing its part in diverting the pirates.
He floundered back to the wet sand and gravel fifty yards from the caravel, with no cover to speak of-but he was in the darkness, and the pirates’ attention was fixed on the bright fire. Men were swarming over the rail to battle the blaze now, beating at the flames with wet blankets and old cloaks or throwing buckets of water and sand as quickly as they could draw them. Several pirates still lingered near the place where the woman was tied up, but
