Besides Alicia and Robyn, Hanrald, Keane, Tavish, Brigit, and twelve Corwellian longbowmen formed the ship's complement. The latter wielded bows that could shoot twice as far as any northman's bow, and their presence greatly enhanced the ship's defensive punch.
Yet even with nearly eighty voyagers aboard, the
For all that afternoon and the first night, the coastlines of the firth slowly separated to the port and starboard. At dawn, the bracketing shores remained visible, but only as faint lines of green and brown along the distant horizon. By midmorning, the firth had widened such that they couldn't see land to either side, though it would be another day before they actually left the protection of Gwynneth's enclosing peninsulas and truly set a course upon the Trackless Sea.
'What heading will you sail, once we pass Moray?' inquired Brigit, as she, Robyn, and Alicia were joined by the captain in the vessel's prow.
'West by north,' he said without hesitation. 'We'll pass to the north of the Gullrocks and then swing to the west. That's where
The sister knight shook her head. 'Actually, none of us Llewyrr-even Erashanoor! — are terribly clear on exactly where the island lies on an actual map of the Realms. We've always used the Fey-Alamtine rather than mundane transportation to reach the island.'
'As to where it is,' Robyn announced, 'I think I can help us there. The goddess will certainly help me identify the presence of a large land mass before us if we can get anywhere in the vicinity.'
'Well, all I can do is sail toward water that every sensible sailor avoids-avoids because that's where Evermeet is supposed to lie!' Brandon announced with forced heartiness.
A feeling of menace remained with Alicia, a dark sense of foreboding that had lingered since before the start of the voyage. It seemed incongruous now as she looked at the smooth water, sparkling in the light of a beaming sun.
Yet the feeling wouldn't go away.
Luge lay awake, trembling, disturbed by some terrifying knowledge within him, knowledge that he didn't grasp or understand, yet somehow knew. The stocky crewman, who had spent the last night of his shore leave in the company of the man called Malawar, had no memory of that encounter.
Now Luge continued to suffer his hangover, thirty-six hours after that portentous evening. He didn't recall the specifics of his own stark terror, but he knew that dark hole in his memory was the cause of his current unease.
In the morning, he had recalled nothing of the experience save for a lingering sense that his sleep had not been pleasant. The discovery of his friend's body had pounded his brain with shock, and since then he had passed through his duties in a haze. Roloff had been a lifelong companion, and his death-which Luge couldn't even remember! — tore at the sailor's conscience like a festering wound.
Nevertheless, it was that experience, a potent spell cast by the mysterious stranger, that now compelled him to stir.
His shadowy figure moved from the rowing bench, toward the gunwale of the
Crouching, Luge moved low between the benches until he reached the rail behind the shelter of several water barrels. Here he raised his head, peering cautiously over the gunwale of the speeding longship.
Huddled in the shadows of the casks, blacker even than the dim starlight above, Luge reached into a concealed pouch-a flap that had been sewn into the lining of his sea cloak. His eyes widened in surprise-until that moment he had not recalled the pouch's existence, though he had been present when Malawar attached it.
Within, he felt several tiny metallic pebbles. He selected one with his blunt thumb and forefinger and withdrew his hand. A tiny tinkle sounded in the night, too faint to carry even to the ears of the nearby northmen but enough to identify the object as a small bell.
Still wondering why he was doing it, Luge dropped the bell over the side. It splashed into the waters squarely at the mouth of Corwell Firth.
In the water, the bell continued to ring… but now its sound was magnified a thousand-, a millionfold. The tinkle became a pounding dirge, and its weight carried it through the sea for dozens and scores and ultimately hundreds of miles.
Along the vast, kelp-lined ridges and plains of the Coral Kingdom, the tiny bell ringing four hundred miles to the north sounded a call to war. Huge sahuagin armies, camped for weeks along coral reefs, mustered forth, swarming up from the sea bottom, driving themselves northward. The fishmen swam with strong kicks, their companies spreading through the depths, some swimming high, breaking the surface occasionally to observe the surrounding sea, while others swam at different levels, with the deepest swimming more an a thousand feet below.
The huge scrags, long teeth gleaming even in the dingy waters of the kingdom's Deepvale, formed columns, twelve scrags per column, each column more than a match for any merchant crew of humankind. Hulking beasts nearly twice as large as the fishmen, the sea trolls propelled their sleek bodies through the sea with powerful legs and thick, webbed feet. Hair, like loose strands of seaweed, trailed back from round, scale-coated skulls. The columns of the scrags swam in the center of the army, leaving the lesser creatures to scout.
Some of the aquatic warriors bore weapons-silver-tipped spears or curved, shell-studded scimitars-but most relied on their multitudinous teeth and sharp, curving claws. Others trailed nets, hopeful of seizing captives, and a few were armed with bows and arrows, though these weapons would only be useful in the air or at extremely short range when submerged.
A hundred such columns and companies gathered around the palaces of the Coral Kingdom, swarming upward, through waters that passed from purple to blue to aqua and then to the pale green of the surface. The sahuagin veered to the sides when the scrag columns swam, the fishmen cowering away from the mighty and infinitely evil sea trolls.
Other creatures, too, emerged from the depths to swell the ranks of the undersea army. Schools of sharks and sinuous formations of eels took position on the flanks of the force. The sharks were particularly useful, for they ravaged with sudden and bloody attacks any unfortunate dolphins or whales that stumbled into the path of the great army. In this way, the movement could be kept secret from the merfolk and titans, the two implacable enemies of the scrags and their allies.
To the north they swam, faster by far than any human army could march overland, riding a graceful northerly current to increase their pace still more. The army's master was Coss-Axell-Sinioth, swimming among them in the body of the monstrous squid, propelling himself faster even than the sleekest scrag could swim. The minion of Talos relished his new command and knew that the bell signaled a forthcoming opportunity to blood his troops.
As they moved, the leaders-Sythissal of the sahuagin and Krell-Bane, king of the sea trolls-knew that their speed would not in itself be sufficient to catch the human ship if it continued its course away from them. But that fact did not worry them. It was for this very reason, they reminded themselves, that Sythissal had built and placed the Mantas.
For several days the army swam northward, and in that time it reached the first bell dropped by the agent of Sinioth. By then, three more bells had been dropped, one during each night of the longship's steady journey to the northwest.
Yet the fact that the humans had three days' lead on the army still didn't concern the aquatic generals, for here, at the mouth of Corwell Firth, the strongest swimmers among them would mount the Mantas.
After that, the seizing of the vessel was a matter of near certainty.
