The Reaver Page 6

  The waveservant looked to his parishioners. “Kill him!” he cried. “While he’s still weak!”

  After a moment, three of the rougher-looking villagers started forward. But with a theatrical flourish, Anton slowly swept the cutlass, now gory from point to guard, in their direction. They balked.

  “For your own sakes,” said Anton, “don’t. Leave the priest and me to settle this between ourselves.” He strode forward, and the rustics scurried to clear his path.

  For a moment, the waveservant looked like he was considering turning tail. Then his square face twisted. He hissed words that sounded less like human language than breakers curling and foaming toward a shore, and on the final syllable, jabbed his trident in the direction of his oncoming foe.

  Nothing seemed to happen. But intuition prompted Anton to glance back. Streaming up into the air from a puddle, rippling water gathered itself into the shape of a floating trident. If he hadn’t turned, it would have struck him down by surprise. As it might spear him yet, for as he knew from past experience, he couldn’t destroy such a manifestation of magic by any means at his disposal.

  He ducked its first thrust, whirled, and ran, zigzagging to throw off its aim. The trick enabled him to reach the waveservant unscathed.

  That accomplishment meant he’d now have to contend with two stabbing tridents instead of one, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was that at long last, his true foe was finally within reach.

  Anton cut at the waveservant’s head, and the priest blocked the stroke with his trident. The pirate then sprang to the side and discovered an instant later that he’d timed the trick properly. The flying trident streaked through the space he’d just vacated toward its creator.

  Unfortunately, though, the three tines splashed harmlessly against the waveservant’s chest. Then the scattered droplets flew back together to reform them as the trident spun itself around. Evidently, the magic couldn’t harm the man who’d worked the spell. But at least for the moment, both tridents, the one of steel and ash and its counterpart of solidified water, were in front of Anton. That was better than having to worry about a stab in the back.

  He beat the mundane trident hard enough to loosen the Umberlant’s grip on it. As he’d known it would, the action opened him to a thrust from the flying weapon, but he pivoted back in time to defend with an equally forceful parry. The trident splashed apart, then flew back together as it had before.

  But before it could finish reforming, Anton rushed the waveservant. Scrambling backward, the priest dropped the trident and opened his mouth, no doubt to attempt more magic. Happily, to no avail. The cutlass slashed his face and then pierced his heart before he could even start the prayer.

  As the waveservant collapsed, Anton spun back around to face the trident of water. He had to dodge one more thrust, and then the weapon fell apart and splashed back onto the ground.

  Anton was panting, and his blade shook in his hand. But he couldn’t relax yet. He had, after all, just killed the village priest, and although he’d intimidated the locals previously, they might yet find the nerve to try to avenge one of their own.

  He turned around to find them gawking at him. He couldn’t tell how they felt about what had just happened. Maybe they were still deciding.

  Then Stedd walked forward several paces, perhaps so everyone in the crowd could see him clearly. “I’m sorry for this,” he said. “We didn’t come here to hurt anybody. But the priest brought it on himself. He wanted to prove Lathander couldn’t help me, and he paid for his disbelief.

  “That means,” the boy continued, “he gave his life to teach you all a lesson, but the lesson wasn’t what he expected. Will you learn it? Will you choose a different path than the one he was pushing you down? This is the time to decide!”

  A big, middle-aged man with shrewd, deep-set eyes squared his shoulders. He looked like the sort of fellow who might have been a village elder or even mayor before hard times and the desperation they engendered allowed the waveservant to usurp everyone else’s authority.

  “Let Aggie go,” the big man said, “and put her things back where they belong.”

  His body slumping, Anton let the cutlass drop to his side.

  At some point, a sailor, likely at the displaced captain’s command, had rigged a little awning stitched from sailcloth to project out from the edge of the quarterdeck over a bit of the main deck. The cover provided some shelter, and Umara had taken refuge beneath it to eat her biscuit and mug of fish stew out of the rain.

  It was a decent supper by the low standards of shipboard life. The cook had paid an exorbitant price in Thayan silver for flour while the galley sat at anchor in the harbor of Immurk’s Hold, and as a result, the ship’s biscuits were currently fresh and soft. A sensible person would enjoy them before they petrified into the usual flavorless, tooth-breaking lumps.

  But the best Umara could manage was a few nibbles, even though her body presumably needed nourishment to replace the lost blood. Lingering revulsion robbed her of her appetite.

  People claimed a vampire’s kiss could induce rapture. With a mix of wistfulness and thankfulness, she wondered why Kymas never bothered to manipulate her emotions in that fashion. Maybe he assumed she already enjoyed the sting of his needle teeth and the suck of his cold lips—she’d certainly been too prudent to indicate otherwise—or perhaps the nature of her experience simply didn’t matter to him.

  She could only hope that when she herself was undead, predation would feel different from the other side. Because if the act still revolted her, and yet she had to perform it over and over down the centuries of her extended existence …

  With a scowl, she shoved such anxieties away. Of course, she’d relish drinking blood. Her transformation would sweep away her squeamishness along with any other weak mortal feelings and notions that might otherwise keep her from thriving. It would solve her problems and make her better than she was, and, fixing her mind on that reassuring truth, she slurped in another mouthful of fish, carrots, and lentils.

  The taste still failed to stimulate her appetite.

  With a sigh, she stuck the remains of her biscuit into a cloak pocket in the hope she’d want it later. Then she walked to the gunwale and flicked the contents of her cup down into the black, benighted sea.

  Moments later, the hatch below the quarterdeck clicked open, and Kymas emerged in a red hooded cloak like her own. With his thirst slaked, he looked every inch the mage as courtier, moving in unhurried fashion with a subtle smile on his face. It had taken Umara years to learn to recognize the bare hint of tautness in his posture that revealed something had displeased him.

  Fortunately, it didn’t appear that the something was her. Kymas gave her a smile and said, “There you are. Good. You can help me sort this out.” He raised his voice: “Captain!”

  Ehmed Sepandem was an aging Mulan with two missing fingers, a pockmarked sour face, and a disposition to match. Umara sometimes wondered if his bitterness arose from the growing suspicion that his masters deemed his lifetime of service insufficient to merit the supreme reward of undeath. Whatever the cause, he was a tyrant to the crew but came quickly as any common swab when a Red Wizard called him.

  “Yes, Lord,” Ehmed said.

  “Good evening, Captain,” Kymas replied. “Do you know, I believe I’m growing accustomed to life at sea. Though shut up in the cabin you were generous enough to lend me, I somehow sensed the ship was making little headway. So I came on deck to see for myself, and sure enough, it’s so.”

  Ehmed glanced back at the lateen sails. “The wind’s still from the east, Lord. We’re beating into it, but it’s slow going.”

  “That makes sense on its own terms,” Kymas said, “but I was under the impression that it was precisely for occasions like this that we have oars.”

  The captain hesitated. Umara suspected that, like many an underling faced with a superior’s unreasonable demands, he was calculating how to explain the realities of the situation without appeari
ng insubordinate.

  “The oarsmen rowed all day,” he finally said. “They have to eat and rest, or they’ll be of no use tomorrow.”

  “I see your point,” Kymas said, “and I apologize. Here we are, Lady Ankhlab and myself, wizards of Thay, guests aboard your vessel, and we should have taken an interest in your problems before this. Let’s go down to the first bank.”

  The first bank of benches was below deck, and the reeking, whip-scarred wretches shackled behind their oars were slaves. Kymas looked around, and then, pointing, said, “I’ll have that one.”

  Even skinnier than his fellows, truly emaciated, the man the vampire had indicated sat slumped motionless and perhaps unconscious over the shaft of his oar. Ehmed grunted. “I don’t know what you have in mind, Lord, but that man won’t last much longer even with proper use.”

  “That’s why I chose him,” the wizard replied. “I like to think I’m a good Banite overall, but I confess to a preference for mercy within the bounds of practicality.”

  With that, he headed down the aisle between the benches, and Umara and the captain followed. Either sensing something uncanny about the vampire or simply leery of any Red Wizard, slaves shrank from him to the extent their leg irons would allow.

  The dying oarsman, however, remained oblivious until Kymas took hold of matted hair crawling with lice and lifted his head. The rower then yelped and tried to slap the Red Wizard’s hand away, but Kymas held onto him without difficulty.

  The vampire stared into the slave’s eyes. “I’m going to set you free. Do you believe me?”

  His struggles subsiding, the oarsman stared back. “Yes,” he murmured.

  “Good.” Kymas glanced around at Umara. “Could you do something about these?” He gestured to the cuffs securing the slave’s ankles.

  Umara didn’t have a key to the leg irons, but she didn’t need one. Trying not to breathe in the stench of the filth under the benches, she kneeled down and spoke a word of opening, and the magic popped the shackle open.

  “Now come along,” Kymas said. Hobbling, the mesmerized slave followed him, Ehmed, and Umara up back up onto the main deck.

  The upper bank of oars was the responsibility of free men, mariners who performed other duties besides rowing. Naturally, they weren’t chained to their benches, but some were resting there even so. In the close confines of the ship, it was a place to sit or stretch out. Others stood in line waiting for the cook to ladle out their evening meals.

  “I’d like everyone’s attention!” Kymas called, and the crew turned to look at him. “Gather round.”

  After a moment of nearly universal hesitation, all hands except those occupied with some essential task came closer. Umara had seen such reluctance countless times before. Many Thayan commoners preferred to keep their distance from Red Wizards, especially undead ones.

  “Thank you,” Kymas said. “Now I don’t have to shout to ask who among you understands what I’m trying to accomplish by chasing around the Inner Sea.”

  Nobody answered.

  Kymas nodded. “That’s what I thought, so allow me to explain. Over the course of the last couple years, individuals with special gifts have been appearing in various places around Faerûn. Allowed to run wild, these Chosen, as they’re called, pose a threat to Thayan interests. But conversely, if someone could lay hands on one of them and fetch him to Szass Tam, our monarch could harness his power to do great things.”

  Based on her own understanding of magic and all the stories she’d heard about the ruler of her homeland, Umara suspected the prisoner in question wouldn’t survive the harnessing. Or else would wish he hadn’t.

  “So that’s my mission,” Kymas continued, “and I’m not the first of our master’s servants to undertake something similar. I’m told he dispatched an expedition to the Star Peaks but it failed to accomplish its objective, and those agents had to bear the weight of his disappointment.”

  The vampire ran his gaze over his listeners. “I would very much regret finding myself in the same position, and yet the obstacles in my way are considerable. I’ve identified a target, but others are seeking him, too. I need to scoop him up before they do. Thus, it dismayed me to learn that the combination of contrary winds and human frailty has slowed our progress to a crawl.

  “I can’t do anything about the former. I never studied that form of magic. But I can address the latter.” Kymas turned to Umara. “Kill the slave.”

  She felt a twinge of distaste. As every Thayan understood, the lowly lived and died to serve their betters, but unlike some aristocrats, she took no pleasure in the gratuitous mistreatment of slaves. But she supposed it wasn’t gratuitous if her superior commanded it, and it might actually be an act of mercy to put the wretch out of his misery.

  She murmured rhyming words that filled her mouth with a metallic taste, then breathed on her hand at the end of the incantation. The taste departed, and her hand changed. Catching the light of a nearby storm lantern, her skin glinted. Her fingertips tapered into points, and a ridge like the edge of a knife protruded along the bottom of her hand from the tip of the little finger to the wrist.

  As it did, the slave finally shook off the dazed passivity Kymas’s gaze had induced and realized what was about to happen. Goggling, he tried to recoil, but the vampire and Ehmed were in the way, and the latter shoved him stumbling back in Umara’s direction. She sliced the side of his neck.

  Blood jetted, and the slave fell. Kymas waited for him to stop shuddering and then said, “My turn.”

  The senior wizard made a little snapping motion with his arm, and a wand carved of bone slid out of his voluminous sleeve and into fingers just as ivory-pale. He raised the implement over his head and chanted in the language of Thanatos.

  The words and the feeling they engendered, as though the night was a huge black fist closing around the galley, made Umara’s ears ache and her temples throb. And she was not alone in her distress. One onlooker vomited. Another sailor scurried into the bow to get as far away as possible. His retreat represented a breach of discipline, but he was evidently willing to risk a flogging.

  The corpse twitched, then shuddered. A pale yellow luminescence flowered in its eyes.

  “Stand up,” Kymas said, and the zombie did. “Everyone, behold an improved oarsman. It doesn’t need nourishment or rest. If I wished, it would row without stopping for years on end, until its joints simply fell apart. If I filled the benches with others like it, I would no longer have to worry about making good time.”

  One of the sailors clenched his fist and touched it to his heart. It was a way of asking the Black Hand to shield him from misfortune. No doubt his fellow mariners likewise recognized that Kymas was threatening them and not merely the slaves.

  Kymas smiled. “But alas, the transformation involves a tradeoff. As living men, you possess skills that would depart your bodies along with your souls, and I would hate to see my mission fail for lack of access to those abilities. For that and other reasons, I’d prefer to leave you as you are provided you can muster the will to row for longer periods at a stretch. Can you?”

  For a moment, no one answered. Then a man said, “Aye.”

  Kymas smiled. “Splendid. By all means, have your suppers before you return to the oars.” He turned to the zombie. “You, come with me back below.”

  Where, Umara reflected, the gruesome sight of the creature would provide the same sort of motivation to the slave rowers, and after that, Kymas would bid it return to its station. She wondered how well its bench mate would tolerate having to toil beside it.

  When Anton tried to rise from the pallet Aggie had made for him, his body was as stiff as an iron bar. That, along with exhaustion and the relief of resting warm, clean, and dry at last, made him as disinclined to stand up as ever in his life.

  Grunting, he struggled to his feet anyway, then contemplated the garments hung near the fire. Any item he put on now would likely still be damp come morning. He supposed it didn’t much matter. The r
ain would find its way inside his cloak soon enough, perhaps before he and Stedd had even left the village.

  Still, he simply pulled on his breeches, threw his mantle around his shoulders, and drew up the cowl. Then he opened the cottage door, slipped out, and eased it shut behind him.

  Every step squished mud up between his toes, but at least the rain had let up some and merely pattered on his shoulders. He was glad, but months into this sodden catastrophe he knew better than to take that as cause for hope that the precipitation might actually stop. The weather was simply teasing him.

  When he reached the shore, he sheltered beneath an apple tree. Except for a couple of stunted green pieces of fruit rotting on the branch, it wasn’t bearing. Maybe salt water, diffusing through the soil from the encroaching sea, had poisoned it.

  He gazed out across the waves rolling in beneath the cloud cover. Everything was black except for the flicker of lightning far to the northwest.

  That dark vista was essentially what he’d hoped to see. Yet for some reason, it set a hollow ache inside him. He supposed it was just another manifestation of his fatigue.

  Still, tired as he was, it would be more prudent to stand and watch for a while than just take a single look and return to the cottage. He knuckled his eyes, and then a voice said, “What are you doing?”

  Anton turned to see that Stedd, wrapped in the hooded mantle the villagers had given him, had crept up behind him. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  “I woke up and saw you sneak out,” Stedd replied. “What are you looking for?”

  “The lights of the Iron Jest. Or of any other ship that might be hunting us. Now go back to bed.”

  Instead, the boy moved up to stand and look out over the waves beside Anton. “Are you angry at me?”

  “I was for a little while,” Anton admitted, and then, mindful of his resolve to stay on good terms with his unwitting captive, added a lie: “Not anymore.”