Spirit of the Wind

Voices.

“Help us!” they cried. “In here!”

There was a door at the back of the bunkroom. He ran to it and pushed it open, revealing a large cabin at the very back of the hold. It was a supply room, littered with food, ruin, rope, sailcloth, and small barrels of pitch for sealing the hull. There was also a weapons chest, like the one aboard Brinestrider. It still held a dozen or so cutlasses.

He ignored all of these, however, moving quickly to a locked iron grate in the floor. The voices came from it.

“Help!” they cried. “Get us out of here!”

Kronn knelt by the grate and peered inside. Below him were people-dozens of them, gaunt and pale from hunger. They stared up at him silently, their eyes pleading. Hands reached toward the grate, fingers groping between the bars.

Kronn examined the lock, reached into a small purse he wore at his belt, and pulled out a long, slender lockpick. “Don’t worry,” he told the slaves. “I’m going to let you out. But once you’re free, I’m going to need you to give me a little help. All right?”

Down in the crimson surf, the young sailor’s screaming was cut off by a terrible, rending sound. For a second time the rope became taut, then went limp. The pirates reeled it in. Something still hung from its end, and they cut it loose and threw it overboard again. Brightdawn caught a glimpse of fingers before it disappeared from sight, and she choked with nausea, trying to look away.

The half-ogre, however, grabbed her by the hair and shook her. “No, you don’t,” he told her. “You’re watching this, girl.” With his free hand, he waved to his men. “Tie the spirited youngster up.”

“You want me to open him up?” asked a pirate with a gaff. His eyes glinted unpleasantly as his fellows fastened Swiftraven to the rope.

The half-ogre laughed. “Be patient, Hurth. Wait till he’s hung up first. We want the blood in the water, not all over the deck.”

“Let him go!” Riverwind roared as the pirates shoved Swiftraven toward the gunwale. He started toward them, but stopped when a blade pressed against his throat.

“I’m sorry, my chief,” Swiftraven moaned from beside the railing. “The Courting Quest-”

The pirates gave a great pull at the rope, and his words cut off in a cry of pain as he jerked up off the deck. He rose four feet into the air, the rope lifting him by his arms. The quarrel in his shoulder gouged deeper into his flesh as he swung slowly above the water. The dark shapes of the sharks circled beneath him, waiting with predatory patience.

“Brightdawn,” he moaned.

She looked at him, her eyes gleaming. “Please put him down,” she murmured. Her voice broke, and she coughed raggedly. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Yes,” the half-ogre hissed. “You will.” He bent forward, his tongue brushing her ear, then nodded toward Swiftraven. “Go ahead, Hurth.”

The glint in the gaff-wielder’s eyes became a horrible blaze. He stepped toward Swiftraven, raising the hook, and pressed the point against the young warrior’s belly, just below his breastbone. “This is going to hurt,” he breathed. “Now hold st-”

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a fist-sized stone shot through the air. It struck Hurth in the side of the head with a wet smack. The gaff fell from the pirate’s suddenly nerveless hand, hit the deck, and bounced overboard. Hurth’s knees buckled and he crumpled in a lifeless heap.

A stunned silence fell over Brinestrider. Everyone-pirates, sailors and Plainsfolk- turned to look down the length of the ship, toward the stern. A female kender stood at the hatch, hoopak in hand. There was already a second stone in its pouch.

“Reel him back in,” Catt said, gesturing toward Swiftraven with her hoopak. “And hurry up.”

A strange sound rose, then-a dull roar of vengeful hate, coming from Red Reaver. They came out of the pirate ship’s hold, pale and ragged, scrawny and battered, a tide of near-naked men bearing blades and clubs. Shrieking with bestial rage, they rushed toward the boarding planks, then surged aboard Brinestrider.

Kronn was in the front of the mob, chapak in hand, gemstones and steel coins falling from his overstuffed pockets. Behind him, several slaves were pouring pitch over the Reaver’s deck and setting it alight. Black, oily smoke started to rise from the ship.

It had all happened so fast, so suddenly, that the pirates’ captain could only watch the charging slaves with open, dumbfounded shock. Finally he shoved Brightdawn away from him-she tripped over a coil of rope and stumbled to her knees-and jerked the massive hammer from his belt. “Attack!” he shouted.

His call galvanized the stunned pirates. They turned toward the boarding planks, then charged toward the slaves, cutlasses held high. The men who held the rope from which Swiftraven hung simply let go; the young warrior dropped over the edge with a shout, followed by a loud splash.

The pirate who held the cutlass to Riverwind’s throat had lowered his blade without thinking, gawking as his fellows ran to intercept the attacking slaves. It was all the opportunity the old Plainsman needed. His foot lashed out, slamming against the side of the pirate’s knee. Bone cracked, and the man fell, sobbing in pain and clutching his ruined leg. Riverwind kicked him a second time, in the head, and the man fell still.

His muscled arms bulging, Riverwind strained against his bonds with all his strength. The jute cord around his wrists snapped, and he dashed to Swiftraven’s rope, grabbing it before it could spool away. He hauled on the rope, slowly reeling it in; moments later, Kael Ar-Tam and two of the sailors burst their bonds and joined him.

The escaped slaves smashed into the pirates, hacking viciously with cutlasses and cudgels. Driven by rage, they drove back their former captors, cutting them down without mercy. Kronn buried his chapak’s axe head in a pirate’s side, then jerked it free as the man staggered into the railing and fell overboard. Catt jabbed the metal- shod tip of her hoopak at a pirate’s throat, then leaped aside as he swung back at her with his sword. A slave buried his cutlass in the pirate’s ribs.

The half-ogre captain shoved his way past his faltering men, his warhammer singing through the air. A slave fell beneath the weapon, then another, and then a third. The half-ogre roared with fury.

Then, directly behind him, a scream cut through the din of battle. The half-ogre glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw the steel head of a mace swinging toward his face. He opened his mouth to cry out, but the mace struck before he could make a sound, and his world vanished in an explosion of red mist. He fell, groping at what had once been his face.

Brightdawn stared at his twitching body, seething with fury, then hit him again. He jerked one last time, then stopped moving for good. Brightdawn stumbled back, her mace dripping blood.

Riverwind and the sailors were trying to reel in Swiftraven. At last, the young warrior surfaced, unconscious and bleeding afresh from a short gash on his leg. The sailors grabbed him and laid him down on the deck, and Riverwind tore a strip from his own tunic, using it to bandage his wounds. When the fighting was all but over, only a handful of pirates remained, pinned against Brinestrider’s gunwale by the escaped slaves. One by one they fell, until only one man was left. He stood silhouetted against the leaping flames that raged across Red Reaver’s deck, flailing wildly with his cutlass to keep his attackers at bay. In the end it was Kronn who evaded his blade and leapt in, chapak swinging. The pirate leaned back from the kender’s axe, overbalanced, and toppled over the railing into the churning sea.

The kender watched him fall, then looked around with satisfaction. His eyes met Riverwind’s, and he grinned.

The Plainsman stared back, still half amazed, then slumped wearily to the deck.

Red Reaver was still smoldering at sunset, creaking and crackling. The cinders of her hull glowed red in the deepening dark. She listed sideways as seawater seeped in through her fire-weakened hull, and her bow was considerably closer to the waterline than her stern, but stubbornly she refused to sink. The black, charred fingers of her masts clutched upward, toward the pale, rising moon.

Amid the fire’s dim light, the survivors of the battle wrapped their dead in blankets and lined them along the bloodstained deck. It had been a heavy toll. Nine of the escaped slaves, and all of Captain Ar-Tam’s crew save three