Reaching the dock, Jherek was challenged at once by the Flaming Fist mercenaries who'd established a beachhead and were in the process of beating the sahuagin back. More mercenaries arrived, and still others were putting out into the harbor in small boats and slitting the throats of the helpless sahuagin and other creatures that had been stunned by the blast.
Some of them helped Jherek and Sonshal get Khlinat up onto the dock and laid out. Jherek seized a torch from a nearby man and held it to study the dwarf.
Khlinat held his hands over his lower abdomen. Blood spilled between his fingers. 'Got me betwixt wind and water, swabbie. Unless we can get a healer damned quick, I ain't going to live to see the morrow.'
Jherek knew it was true. He turned to the Flaming Fist mercenaries. 'I need a healer.'
A grizzled old warrior with blood soaking up through his right arm and dripping from his bared blade crossed over to them. He looked down at the dwarf and shook his head. 'You'd have to be one of Tymora's most favored this night to find one, boy, but I'll put the word out.'
' 'Tis no good, swabbie,' Khlinat whispered. 'Ye did yer best, and there's no complaints about that.' He managed a smile that looked terrible against his graying complexion. 'We gave them damned sea devils what-for, didn't we?'
'Yes,' Sonshal said, kneeling beside the dwarf. He'd seized a cloak from one of the passing mercenaries who still had dry clothes and spread it over the little man. 'That was a piece of risky business you did there, friend, and I'll not begrudge the tale in the telling. I'm proud to have been at your side.'
'Ah, 'twas ye,' Khlinat said. 'Ye stood there and lit them fuses while them sahuagin were about climbing yer backside. Takes a brave man to do that.'
Gently, Jherek pried the dwarf's hands from his wound, finding it much easier than he'd thought. Tears burned at the back of his eyes for the little man, though he'd known him for only a short time. The innate bravery and honor Khlinat had shown touched him deeply.
The wound was two or three inches across on Khlinat's abdomen, and there was an exit wound on the other side just as large. Khlinat's breathing slowed and grew shallower.
'Looks like he had a spear rammed through him,' Sonshal whispered.
'A spear didn't do that,' Jherek said. He guessed that it had been a shard from the wagon, ripped loose and propelled through the water by the smoke powder blast. The wound seemed clear. 'We need to get the bleeding stopped. That way he'll have a chance of lasting till a healer gets here.' He felt panicked and responsible for the dwarfs situation though he didn't know why. He'd been as much at risk as Khlinat had.
Yet nothing had happened to him even when he'd woke with a sahuagin's claws at his throat.
Live, that you may serve.
Tears coursed down Jherek's face, released by the pent-up pain of watching the dwarf die, the frustration of not being able to do anything about it, and the anger at all that he didn't understand. He pressed his hands to the dwarf's wounds, stemming the blood flow. 'Go find a healer,' he told Sonshal.
'There's not one to be had,' the old man said gruffly. He rested a hand on Jherek's shoulder. 'You've done what you could for him. Sometimes all that remains to be done is to be with them when the passing comes. No man should be alone when that happens.'
'No!' Jherek said hoarsely. 'He's not going to die!'
'There's nothing you can do about that,' Sonshal said. 'A man's life runs the course his gods direct it on, and no man may stay the hand of death when it arrives.'
'No! I won't accept that!' It wasn't right that the dwarf should save so many, yet lose his life in the attempt.
Live, that you may serve.
Jherek reached for that voice, wondering where it came from and how it dared seem to choose him when there were so many others to pick from. He willed the dwarf not to die. 'Pray,' he told the dwarf, 'pray to your Marthammor Duin that you live, Khlinat, then believe with all your might.'
Jherek knew that he didn't believe that strongly himself. He'd chosen Hmater as his god because he most understood the religion. The Crying God based his ethos on enduring and persevering, things that the young sailor understood intimately. His whole life had been about those things.
Khlinat coughed and groaned in pain. Blood bubbled from his lips and ran down his cheek. Blue light dawned at his throat, partially obscured by his matted beard.
Without warning, Jherek felt a low buzz in his hands, like he'd brushed up against an electric eel. Smoky blue blazed under his palms pressed against the dwarf's side. He felt the changes taking place against his hands, but he couldn't move them.
The buzzing finished, and the blue light at Khlinat's throat winked out.
The dwarf's lungs filled in a rush, and he flicked his eyes open. 'Swabbie, what have you done?' His voice sounded stronger, more certain.
'Nothing,' Jherek said, as puzzled as the dwarf. He felt drained by the events of the last few minutes. His eyelids dragged as he scanned the little man.
Khlinat coughed. 'Only if yer calling saving me life nothing, and I ain't ready to call it that. Whatever ye did, I feel better.'
'It wasn't him,' Sonshal said. 'It was something at your throat.'
Khlinat reached up and took up the shark tooth pendent at his throat, stretching it the length of the leather thong that held it. 'This?' He shook his head. 'This is nothing. A trinket left over from the shark what took my leg. Them teeth come out regular, and the healer what fixed me up found it in what was left of me leg. I've been carrying it as a good luck charm, nothing more.'
'What else could be the answer?' Sonshal asked.
The dwarf looked at Jherek. 'I don't know, but I do know I feel better. Let's have a look at me side.'
Hesitantly, Jherek drew his hands away, afraid that the torrent of blood would begin again.
It didn't. Instead, the flesh appeared to have closed in both places. It remained raw and ragged looking, but it was obviously healing, reconnecting.
'Marthammor Duin save a wandering fool,' the dwarf cried in astonishment. 'Outside of a heal potion, or a healer's hands, I've never seen the like.'
Jherek gave him a smile and settled back tiredly on his haunches. The blood was drying tight on his hands. 'If I were you, I wouldn't loose that shark's tooth.'
Khlinat reverently kissed the pendant. 'I'll never feel as angry about that shark, I tell ye.'
Glancing out at the harbor, Jherek saw that a rout of the sahuagin and their aquatic accomplices was in full swing. He had no wish in him to be one of the parties responsible for slitting the throats of the stunned sahuagin. Now that they were organized, the Flaming Fist mercenaries appeared to have things well in hand. He looked for his father's ship, but Bunyip was nowhere to be seen.
It was too late to save many lives, too late to save nearly all of the boats and much of the docks and some of the warehouses and buildings near them, but the docks thronged with men and women who fought enemies as well as fires.
He considered the battle. Madame litaar had sent him to Baldur's Gate after his heritage to Bloody Falkane's pirates was discovered on Butterfly. She'd had a vision that his destiny lay here in the city, but where?
He studied the narrow stone buildings and homes and tried to divine what he was supposed to find here. Dark thoughts intruded, and he had to wonder if it hadn't all been some kind of mistake. His life had never been simple or easy. He thought this could be a set of circumstances deliberately fashioned to lead him here and make an even bigger fool of him.
But who would do such a thing? And why?
He didn't know, but the voice he heard in his mind at such times was real. He had to believe at least that much because thinking himself mad was no option at all.
He heard someone come to a stop behind him and looked up to find a skinny old man with a bald head peering down at him with more interest than the young sailor had ever felt before. Carefully, he got to his feet.
'Can I help you?' Jherek asked.
'Mayhap we can help each other,' the old man said. 'My name is Pacys. I'm a bard. I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.'
Jherek studied the old man but didn't feel in any way threatened by him. 'Let me help my friend to a safe
