Corsair

Hamil frowned. “I’d forgotten it. Just a moment.” He pulled it out and carefully opened it under the light of the swinging stern lantern. After a moment, he shook his head and passed it to Sarth. “It looks like some kind of incantation.”

Sarth glanced at it and shrugged. “Arcane words are written in several different tongues, and I had thought I would at least recognize a few words in any of them. But this is nonsense to me. Keep it safe, and I will see if I can use magic to decipher it when I have the opportunity to study it carefully.” He looked back to Geran. “What will you do with Moonshark?”

Geran smiled grimly. “I still need to get to Hulburg, and Moonshark’s going to take me there. Now, let’s get you on your way, because I’ve got to turn the ship and run away from the coast again in just a few minutes.”

FIFTEEN

8 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Kraken Queen raced past the Arches of Hulburg’s harbor an hour after midnight, her oars sweeping her eagerly ahead through the whitecaps and the wind-driven rain. At her back came Daring, Wyvern, and Seawof-all told, almost five hundred Black Moon corsairs thirsting for blood, rape, and treasure. Few lights showed in the town, only a handful of streetlamps and the occasional lanternlit doorway of a tavern or merchant tradeyard. Sergen Hulmaster shaded his eyes from the wind and the rain, peering anxiously at the shoreline. If some word of the Black Moon fleet had come to Hulburg, he expected that ranks of Shieldsworn, merchant coster mercenaries, and even the laughable militia companies of the Spearmeet would be waiting by the wharves to repel the attack. But the waterside streets seemed abandoned.

Sergen allowed himself a small smile. “You were right, Father,” he said. “I think we’ve surprised them.” Given the mysterious absence of Moonshark, he’d spent most of the three-hour sprint from the ruins of Seawave fighting down his own misgivings about the enterprise. It seemed an inauspicious beginning to the night, and he’d urged his father to wait. But Kamoth had been impatient to launch the attack, worried that the worsening weather might make it impossible to strike in a timely manner and that delay would result in the fleet’s discovery.

The High Captain grinned fiercely, throwing a challenge to fate. “Of course I was right!” he said. “You’ve no stomach for this sort of stroke, Sergen. Caution and forethought are fine, but sometimes you need to throw fortune to the wind and see what comes.” He held out his arms, allowing the crewmen who attended him to finish strapping on his scarlet armor. It was fashioned in the shape of a long coat of piscine scales, with finlike embellishments at the joints and an open-faced helm with a fanged sea-serpent design.

Sergen glanced down at his own armor, a light shirt of black chain mail beneath a tough leather coat. “I hope we don’t miss Moonshark’s complement. Another seventy men would greatly fortify my confidence.”

Kamoth waved one gauntleted hand at the sky. “Perhaps, but the wind and weather favor us too much to wait for that sluggard Narsk, my boy. A swift run from the rendezvous, a dark night to hinder anyone trying to organize a defense of the town, and a quick escape when it’s time to go. The Prince of Demons will drink his fill tonight!”

Sergen nodded but did not answer. Long ago Kamoth had sworn him to the service of the demon lord Demogorgon, but the exiled lordling had never found much use for groveling in front of bloodstained altars. He was content to allow his father to glorify Demogorgon in any way he wished, so long as Kamoth didn’t expect him to do the same. “Any sign of Seadrake?” he called to the lookouts.

“No, Lord Sergen! She’s not in port!” the man aloft called back down.

Sergen relaxed a little. Outnumbered four to one, Seadrake wouldn’t have lasted long against the Black Moon flotilla, but he knew better than to underestimate his stepsister, Kara, or his stepcousin, Geran. He’d done so only a few short months ago, and it had cost him the lordship of Hulburg, the friendship of Mulmaster, a great amount of wealth and power, and very nearly his life. Somehow they would have found a way to cause him more trouble with their one warship than they should have been able to in any reasonable world. “But if she’s not here, then where is she?” he wondered aloud and began to worry all over again.

“Likely sniffing after our trail in the waters of the west end,” Kamoth answered. He finished donning his armor. The pirate lord checked the fit with several hard slaps to his shoulders and chest. Then he moved over to the rail and looked at the other vessels following Kraken Queen into the harbor. “Give the signal!” he told the deckhand standing there.

The fellow lifted above the ship’s sternrail a bullseye lantern that held a red-tinted piece of glass. He opened and closed its shutter three times. From the quarterdecks of the other ships, red lights winked back at Kraken Queen in answer. The flotilla split up as each ship began to steer toward its own assigned landing point. “Damn Moonshark, and damn that fool Narsk,” Kamoth muttered. “I hope for his sake that I don’t find reason to wish I’d waited for the fifth ship.”

“The weather might’ve delayed him, High Captain,” Kraken Queen’s first mate said. “He might be only an hour behind us.”

“He’d better be, or the next time I see him, I swear I’ll strap him to the foretop with his own guts and leave him there for the gulls!” Kamoth went back to the ship’s wheel and peered ahead over the rowers. “Easy right rudder now, helm! There, steady as she goes. All right … all right … avast rowing! Raise and ship oars!”

Kraken Queen glided ahead on momentum, coasting closer to the town’s wharves. The abandoned Veruna pier was Kamoth’s target, and the old pirate expertly guided his ship alongside. It seemed too fast to Sergen, and he surreptitiously braced himself against the rail. But then gangs of deckhands leaped to the pier with mooring lines, checking the large galley with the heavy creaking of taut lines and timber pilings. The whole wharf trembled as Kraken Queen came to a stop.

“Well done!” Kamoth called. “Now go! The town’s yours for the taking!”

With a wild chorus of shouts, laughter, and battle cries, Kraken Queen’s crew swarmed over the side and ran into the town. Kamoth himself grinned once at Sergen and followed after his crew, a wicked cutlass gleaming in his hand.

Sergen summoned Kerth and the rest of his magically bound bodyguards and followed more purposefully to the streets of town. He didn’t see any particular need to murder, loot, or rape anyone; he was a very wealthy man, and he could afford all the women he cared for. His task for the night was to watch for resistance and direct the Black Moon corsairs against any trouble spots. If his father wanted to lead from the front and set an example of bloodthirst for the men, that was Kamoth’s concern. Sergen wanted to make sure the raid would have the effect on Hulburg that he desired-no more, and no less.

The first screams rang out in the night, followed by the clash of steel on steel. Shouts of alarm arose from the sleeping town. It was not exactly the triumphant return to Hulburg Sergen had envisioned for himself during the long months of exile in Melvaunt, but he couldn’t suppress a predatory grin. He was likely the single most dangerous enemy of the Hulmasters, the man who’d come closer to unseating the harmachs than anyone in a hundred years, and for tonight at least he roamed the streets with impunity. Geran or Kara would have a fit if they knew I was standing here watching the sacking of the harbor, he thought. The smell of smoke drifted to his nostrils, and the ruddy red glare of fires began to grow in the shadowed alleyways and winding streets. “This might turn out even better than I’d intended,” he said.

“Not for the Hulburgans,” his armsman Kerth answered with a hungry grin.

“It’s the cost I must pay to unseat the harmach, Kerth. The Hulmasters brought this on themselves when Geran and Kara thwarted me before.” Sergen studied the scene for a moment longer and then walked back to the base of the wharf where Kraken Queen was tied up. Dozens of corsairs waited there anxiously, whooping with delight when another building caught fire and shouting encouragement at those of their fellows who remained in view. One man in five from all four ships had been ordered to assemble here, forming a strong reserve of manpower in case the Hulburgans managed to mount some unexpectedly determined defense of their town or tried to retaliate against the pirates’ ships. That, of course, was Sergen’s addition to Kamoth’s plan of