Vaines nodded and moved back to the wheel with his navigator.
'I'll get me bow and go up to the nest,' Catti-brie offered.
'Pick your shots well,' Drizzt replied. 'Likely there is one, or maybe a couple, who are guiding this ship. If you can find them and down them, the rest might flee.'
'Is that the way of pirates?' Regis asked, seeming more than a little confused. 'If they even are pirates?'
'That is the way of a lesser ship coming after us because of the crystal shard,' Drizzt replied, and then the other two caught on.
'Ye're thinking the damned thing's calling them?' Bruenor asked.
'Pirates take few chances,' Drizzt explained. 'A light schooner coming after Quester is taking a great chance.'
'Unless they got wizards,' Bruenor reasoned, for he, too, had understood Captain Vaines's concerns.
Drizzt was shaking his head before the dwarf ever finished. Catti-brie would have been, too, except that she had already run off to retrieve Taulmaril. 'A pirate running with enough magical aid to destroy Quester would have long ago been marked,' the drow explained. 'We would have heard of her and been warned of her before we ever left Waterdeep.'
'Unless she is new to the trade or new of the power,' Regis reasoned.
Drizzt conceded the point with a nod, but he remained unconvinced, believing that Crenshinibon had brought this new enemy in, as it had brought in so many others in a desperate attempt to wrest the relic away from those who would see it destroyed. The drow looked back across the deck, spotting the familiar form of Catti-brie with Taulmaril, the wondrous Heart-seeker, strapped across her back as she made her nimble way up the knotted rope.
Then he opened his belt pouch and gazed upon the wicked relic, Crenshinibon. How he wished he could hear its call to better understand the enemies it would bring before them.
Quester shuddered suddenly as one of its great ballistae let fly. The huge spear leaped away, skipping a couple times across the water far short of the out-of-range schooner, but close enough to let the sailors aboard her recognize that
Quester had no intention of parlay or surrender.
But the schooner flew on without the slightest course change, splitting the water right beside the spent ballista bolt, even clipping the metal-tipped spear as it hung buoylike in the swelling sea. Smooth and swift was its run, seeming more like an arrow cutting the air than a ship cutting the water. The narrow hull had been built purely for speed. Drizzt had seen pirates such as this; often similar ships had led Sea Sprite, also a schooner, but a three-master and much larger, on long pursuits. The drow had enjoyed those chases most of all during his time with Deudermont, sails full of wind, spray rushing past, his white hair flowing out behind him as he stood poised at the forward rail.
He was not enjoying this scenario, though. There were many pirates along the Sword Coast well capable of destroying Quester, larger and better armed and armored than the well-structured caravel, truly the hunting lions of the region. But this approaching ship was more a bird of prey, a swift and cunning hunter designed for smaller quarry, for fishing boats wandering too far from protected harbors or the luxury barges of wealthy merchants who let their warship escorts get a bit too far away from them. Or pirate schooners would work in conjunction, several on a target, a fleet hunting pack.
But no other sails were to be seen on any horizon.
From a different pouch, Drizzt took out his onyx figurine. 'I will bring in Guenhwyvar soon,' he explained to Regis and Bruenor. Captain Vaines came up again, a nervous expression stamped on his face-one that told the drow that, despite his many years at sea, Vaines had not seen much battle. 'With a proper run the panther can leap fifty feet or more to gain the deck of our enemies' ship. Once there she will make more than a few call for a retreat.'
'I have heard of your panther friend,' Vaines said. 'She was much the talk of Waterdeep Harbor.'
'Ye better bring the damned cat up soon then,' Bruenor grumbled, looking out over the rail. Indeed, the schooner already seemed much closer, speeding over the waves.
To Drizzt the image struck him as purely out of control; suicidal, like the giant that had followed them out of the Spine of the World. He put the figurine on the ground and called softly for the panther, watching as the telltale gray mist began to swirl about the statue, gradually taking shape.
Catti-brie wiped her eyes, then lifted the spyglass once again, scanning the deck, hardly believing what she saw. But again she saw the truth of it all: that this was no pirate, at least none of the kind she had ever before seen. There were women aboard, and not warrior women, not even sailors, and surely not prisoners. And children! Several she had seen, and none of them dressed as cabin boys.
She winced as a ballista spear grazed the schooner's deck, skipping off a turnstile and cracking through the side rail, only missing a young boy by a hands' breadth.
'Get ye down, and be quick,' she instructed the lookout sharing the crow's nest. 'Tell yer captain to load chain and
take her in her high sails.'
The man, obviously impressed with the tales he had heard of Drizzt and Catti-brie, turned without hesitation and started down the rope, but the woman knew that the task for stopping this coming travesty had fallen squarely upon her shoulders.
Quester had dropped to battle sail, but the schooner kept at full, kept its run straight and swift, and seemed as if it meant to smash right through the larger caravel.
Catti-brie put up the spyglass again, scanning slowly, searching, searching. She knew now that Drizzt's guess about the schooner's course and intent had been correct, knew that this was Crenshinibon's doing, and that truth made her blood boil with rage. One, or two, perhaps, would be the key, but where. .
She spotted the man at the forward rail of the flying bridge, his form mostly obscured by the mainmast. She held her sights on him for a long while, resisting the urge to shift and observe damage as Quester's ballistae let fly again, this time in accord with Catti-brie's orders. Spinning chains ripped high through the schooner's top sails. This sight, this man at the rail, one hand gripping the wood so tightly that it was white for lack of blood, was more important.
The schooner flinched, the ship veering slightly, unintentionally, until the crew could work the ballista- altered sails to put her in line again. In that turn, the image of the man at the rail drifted clear of the obstructing mast, and Catti-brie saw him clearly, saw the crazed look upon his face, saw the line of drool running from the corner of his mouth.
And she knew.
She dropped the spyglass and took up Taulmaril, lining her shot with great care, using the mainmast as a guide, for she could hardly even see the target.
'If they've a wizard, he should have acted by now,' a frantic Captain Vaines cried. 'For what do they wait? To tease us, as a cat to a mouse?'
Bruenor looked at the man and snorted derisively.
'They've no wizard,' Drizzt assured the captain.
'Do they mean to simply ram us, then?' the captain asked. 'We'll take her down, then!' He turned to yell new instructions to the ballista crews, to instruct his archers to rake the deck. But before he uttered a word a silver streak from the nest above startled him. He spun around to see the streak cut across the schooner's deck, then angle sharply to the right and fly out over the open sea.
Before he could begin to question it another streak shot out, following nearly the same course, except that this one didn't deflect. It soared right past the schooner's mainmast.
Everything seemed to come to a stop, a tangible pause from caravel and schooner alike.
'Hold the cat!' Catti-brie called down to Drizzt.
Vaines looked at the drow doubtfully, but Drizzt didn't doubt, not at all. He put his hand up and called Guenhwyvar-who had moved back on the deck to get a running start-back to his side.
'It is ended,' the dark elf announced.
The captain's doubting expression melted as the schooner's mainsail dropped, the ship's prow also dropping instantly, deeper into the sea. Her back beam swung out wide, turning the triangular back sail. She
