Yet he sweated until he could tell the Thayans had in fact turned southwest.

  He supposed he still had reason to be anxious. The Thayans could conceivably maintain a certain distance and batter Shark’s Bliss with magic, volleys of arrows, and bolts from their ballista. If they did, the pirate vessel, unable to maneuver or run, had no hope of surviving. His ruse had seen to that.

  But the Thayans wouldn’t take that tack, not if convinced they had nothing to fear. Such a barrage could only diminish the value of their prize.

  The Thayan caravel was larger than the Bliss. Her hull, sails, and streaming banners were all varying shades of crimson, and she maneuvered so smartly that enchantment was surely involved.

  “Prepare to be boarded!” someone shouted. Grappling hooks flew, and crunched into the pirate vessel’s timbers. The Thayans heaved on the lines, drawing the ships together. With Shark’s Bliss riding low in the water, the red caravel’s deck was a few feet higher, but even so, it would be possible to clamber from one to the other. t

  The Thayans proceeded to do so. Clad in leather armor and armed with javelins, boarding pikes, and short swords, the shouting warriors herded their new prisoners into a single clump. Anton tried to look scared and submissive while studying the newcomers. He needed to identify the spellcasters.

  He could see only one magician, a short, tubby Red Wizard with a rosy-cheeked, incongruously jolly face. Like all members of his fraternity, the Thayan had shaved every hair from his head, eyebrows included. Vermilion tattooing showed on his neck and wrists. He was likely marked over much of his body, but the scarlet robe hid most of it.

  It was lucky the Thayans had only one warlock, and that he’d elected to come aboard Shark’s Bliss, where his foes could reach him more easily. Armed with a spiked ball and chain, clad in flame-yellow vestments, a priest of Kossuth the Firelord still stood in the forecastle of the crimson ship. He could be trouble.

  “Now then,” said the Red Wizard in a cheerful tenor voice, “who’s the skipper of this unfortunate vessel?”

  “I am,” Shandri Clayhill said.

  The Thayan’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Are you indeed? How charming. May I ask, how did the ship come to grief?”

  “A squall. Look, I have coin and land back in Vel-printalar. I can reward you for rescuing us.”

  The Red Wizard chuckled and fingered one of the gold-and-diamond necklaces dangling on her bosom. “You already have rewarded me, dear girl, and will again later, more intimately. If you’re enthusiastic, perhaps you can avoid-“

  Still bound together, the two ships fell.

  As planned, Tu’ala’keth had cast a spell to scoop the water from beneath their hulls. They dropped several feet, down a hole in the gray-green sea. Everyone slammed down hard when the vessels hit bottom, but at least the pirates had known what to expect, whereas the sudden plummet caught the Thayans entirely by surprise. Some surely suffered sprains and broken bones. All looked stupid with astonishment.

  The spell effect ended as abruptly as it began. Saltwater crashed across the deck, engulfing everything, and Anton was suddenly afraid they’d remain submerged, that they lacked the buoyancy to rise. But then they bobbed up into air and sunlight.

  Screaming crazily, pirates erupted from every hatch that led down into the hold. Despite their lack of weapons, the freebooters who’d remained on deck also sprang at the stunned and disoriented Thayans.

  Anton looked for the Red Wizard. Though the reavers currently had the advantage, a powerful mage might alter that with a single spell. But not if he was denied the time to cast it.

  There! The plump wizard had placed his back to the rail, and some of his bodyguards had positioned themselves in front of him. The man in red intoned a chant as sonorous as a dirge and swept his hands in slow passes. Cool, whispering gloom drifted across the deck, as if the sun had passed behind a cloud.

  Anton knew he’d never fight his way through the bodyguards in time to stop the spell, but fortunately, that wasn’t his only option. Another Thayan-swept overboard or killed by a pirate, the spy neither knew nor cared-had dropped his javelin on the deck. Anton snatched it up and threw it.

  It was a difficult throw because the spear had to pass between two of the guards to reach its mark, but he managed it. The point drove deep into the Red

  Wizard’s chest. Looking bewildered, he stumbled backward to slam into the rail. It cracked in two, and he tumbled into the sea. Sunlight scoured the shadow from the air.

  Anton instantly pivoted to find the priest of Kossuth. Curse it! Nobody else had neutralized the divine, and he was conjuring, too, bellowing and swinging his chain weapon over his head. The spiked ball at the end had ignited and left an arc of flame behind it like a tame shooting star.

  Anton would never reach the brazier, as such folk were called, in time to stop him. He peered about for another missile, even a makeshift one, but nothing came to hand. He wondered just how horrific the fire magic was going to be.

  Then the brazier lurched forward, and blood gushed from his mouth. His knees buckled, and when he collapsed, he revealed Tu’ala’keth standing behind him. She yanked her stone trident from his back and raised it in salutation.

  Anton grinned and nodded back. Then they each turned to find another foe.

  The fight lasted only another minute before the Thayans started throwing down their arms. They were able warriors, but without leadership or magic of their own, they couldn’t stand up to the pirates’ fury or the flares of flame, lightning, and withering darkness with which Kassur and Chadrezzan assailed them.

  The freebooters cheered, and Anton smiled and shook his head. All things considered, the first phase had gone easier than expected.

  ***

  Tu’ala’keth declaimed the sacred words and with the aid of her helpers, shoved the surviving Thayans over the side, one at a time. Some of the naked prisoners merely wept or advanced to the sacrifice as if sleepwalking. Others begged for mercy, screamed curses, or struggled to break free of their captors’ grips.

  Their resistance didn’t bother her. It was appropriate that the sacrifice should fight to survive if it could. Umberlee even spared a few of them, as she’d spared Anton. What vexed Tu’ala’keth was the attitude of many of the pirates, who mocked and jeered at the doomed Thayans, behaving as if the ritual was an entertainment.

  “Silence!” she cried at last. The spectators gaped in surprise. “This is a holy occasion. Do you wish to anger Umberlee, who gave you victory? She is quick to anger, I assure you. You can easily turn her against you.”

  “Glory to the Bitch Queen,” said Harl. The ore was one of the pirates who’d volunteered to assist in the rite. Other freebooters repeated the phrase in a ragged chorus.

  The deference pleased Tu’ala’keth-until she thought to contrast it with the apostasy of her own people. Then it took an effort of will for her to maintain a worshipful frame of mind until the conclusion of the ceremony.

  After that, she turned her attention to the hold. Her magic could help the squeaking, gurgling hand pumps draw the water out. But before she could begin the prayer, a joyous whoop aboard the red caravel snagged her attention.

  “Look at this!” called Durth. He threw back the lid of a brass-bound leather chest and lifted out a fistful of pewter vials, displaying them for all to see. No doubt they contained magical elixirs. A second box yielded gleaming, finely crafted broadswords and rapiers, surely bearing enchantments bound in the steel.

  “The hold ith full of magic!” Sealmid cried. Everyone cheered, and when the clamor subsided,

  Kassur and Chadrezzan were standing with Durth, Sealmid, and the other folk who’d gone to explore the Thayan vessel. Tu’ala’keth blinked, for she hadn’t seen the Talassans make their approach. All at once, they were simply there, at the center of attention.

  “It is a rich prize,” said Kassur. Tu’ala’keth had yet to hear Chadrezzan utter a word. Either he truly was a mute or he’d sworn a vow of silence. “I say we take it back to Dragon Isle and enjoy it.”

  “As I recall,” said Anton, “we’ve only completed the first part of our plan. Stripped to the waist, a rope in hand, he stood at the base of the Boss’s aft mast, where he’d been helping to replace the tattered sails with serviceable ones. “We have the talismans that were going to Saerloon, but not the gold the Thayans expect to send home. I say we steal everything.”

  “That’s foolish,” the man with the eye patch answered. “We were lucky once. Our prize had only one Red Wizard and a single priest aboard, and we caught them by surprise.”

  “As we expect,” Anton said, “to take their counterparts in Saerloon by surprise.”

  “That may not happen,” Kassur said. “Even if it does, I guarantee you, we’ll find several Red Wizards on hand, some far advanced in the mysteries of their craft. We’ll find defenses in place, and whatever the shalarin claims, I doubt her scrying discovered all of them. It isn’t worth the risk. Let’s pass the dice while Lady Luck’s still smiling.”

  Tu’ala’keth understood what was truly in the Talassan’s mind. He still coveted her position for himself, and Anton’s rank for Chadrezzan. He wanted the crew of Shark’s Bliss to sacrifice primarily to Talos, not Umberlee. But none of that would come to pass so long as she and the Turmian kept guiding their comrades to notable victories. Thus, the storm priest counseled turning back not because he expected the raid on Saerloon to fail, but because he feared it might succeed.

  “Are you scared?” Anton asked him.

  “If so,” said Tu’ala’keth, “how dare you wear the Destroyer’s vestments? Does he not command his followers to be fierce and bold?”

  Kassur hesitated. He evidently hadn’t expected anyone to accuse him of being lax in the observance of his own savage creed. Perceiving that he didn’t know how to respond, the pirates muttered to one another.

  “Talos doesn’t command us to seek our own destruction!” Kassur managed at last. “He tells us to destroy our enemies!”

  “Then let’s destroy them,” Anton said.

  Tu’ala’keth turned to the aft castle, where Captain Clayhill had positioned herself to watch the sacrifice and supervise the ongoing repairs. Some of her jewelry still glittered dazzling bright in the sunlight. Other pieces were dull with spatters of Thayan gore.

  “You began this voyage with courage and faith,” said Tu’ala’keth. “I urge you to continue in the same spirit.”

  “If you want to come home with as grand a haul as any pirate’s ever stolen,” Anton said, “and a tale people will tell not just for a tenday or two, but for the rest of our lives.”

  Harl laughed. “That sounds good to me, Captain. Especially the part about the loot.”

  Shandri Clayhill drew a deep breath then gave a nod. “So be it. We sail to Saerloon, and may the gods pity any Thayan bastard who wanders within reach of our blades.”

  The reavers cheered. Kassur and Chadrezzan glared at Anton and Tu’ala’keth with balked, bitter anger in their eyes.

  Even late at night, Saerloon was a bustling port, and the land adjacent to the water was accordingly too valuable for any of it to go waste. Still, as Anton surveyed the Thayan compound at the northern end of the harbor, it seemed to him that it stood a little apart from its neighbors, as if shunned. Maybe it was just his imagination.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Everybody hated Thayans, and rightfully so. The whoresons wanted to conquer all of Faerun. People being people, though, they tolerated the Red Wizards and their minions because they sold magic cheaply. They bought it even though the coin went back to Thay to finance the zulkirs’ schemes to undermine and ultimately subjugate their neighbors.

  But the coin these particular Thayans were sitting on would not be going back to Thay. If Anton had his way, it was bound for Dragon Isle.

  The scarlet caravel glided toward to the dock. Clad in the armor and clothing of the former crew, most of the pirates were aboard. They’d left a few hands on Shark’s Bliss, the minimum required to see her safely home.

  Harl turned the helm a notch. “If we haven’t fooled them,” he said, “I guess we’ll find out when the thunderbolts start flying.”

  “We flashed the proper signal with the lantern,” Anton said. Of course, that was only if the Thayans hadn’t changed the code and if the information he’d picked up in a thieves’ den in Selgaunt had been accurate to begin with. “This is the caravel they’re expecting. The dark should keep them from seeing the ship is crawling with ores.” He shrugged. “I’m optimistic.”

  Harl snorted. “‘Crawling with ores.’ Nice talk.” A breeze wafted the stink of a great city in their direction, a smell compounded of garbage and smoke.

  The caravel glided closer to the dock, where a pair of bald, robed Red Wizards and their bodyguards waited to greet her, and workers scurried about lighting torches to facilitate the process of mooring and unloading her. The flickering yellow illumination revealed the hulking statue at the water’s edge. Twice as tall as a man, it was nearly as wide as it was high, with enormous clenched fists and a face that was all snarling mouth and a single glaring eye.

  Anton studied the Thayans. As best he could judge-the night hampered his vision, too-none of them looked alarmed or even particularly wary. It wasn’t until the pirates started tossing lines to the dockhands that one of the latter abruptly goggled in shock. Maybe he’d noticed the flat-nosed countenance of an ore or Tu’ala’keth’s narrow inhuman features and black dorsal fin.

  Given a chance, the dockhand surely would have cried a warning. But Tu’ala’keth, in the stern castle, and Kassur, in the forward one, each cast the same spell, and all the ambient sounds-the creak of ropes and timbers, the splash and hiss of the water, the conversation on the dock, and the muddled drone of the city beyond-cut off abruptly, supplanted by utter silence.

  Weapons in hand, the first pirates sprang from the caravel to the dock like a wave sweeping onto the shore. In so doing, they slammed some of the Thayans off the platform into the water, and perhaps those were the lucky ones. They might survive if they could swim away.

  A warrior thrust his spear at Anton. The spy parried-thanks to the magic bound in the massive cutlass, the quick, precise defensive action was easy enough-and hacked open the Thayan’s belly. The soldier reeled and toppled off the pier.

  Anton pivoted, seeking the Red Wizards. He had no doubt the magicians were still dangerous, even bereft of the ability to recite incantations. Some spells, and a good many sorcerous weapons, didn’t require the wielder to jabber words of power.

  At first he couldn’t tell anything. The pier was too narrow. The combatants were jammed together, obscuring the view. Then he caught a glimpse of a Red Wizard leveling a wand. Captain Clayhill slashed his neck with a boarding pike. Half severed, his head flopped back on his shoulders, blood spurted, and the arcane weapon dropped from his twitching fingers.

  Good, one down, but where was the other? There! Anton pushed toward him. Before he could reach him, though, the Red Wizard brushed back his voluminous sleeve and ran his fingertip down the curved length of a tattooed sigil. He vanished in a flash of light-

  –and reappeared beside the monstrous statue. His mouth worked as he screamed the command that would bring it to life then snarled in frustration as he realized the zone of silence enshrouded the image, too.

  He still needed killing, however, as soon as possible. Anton looked for a way past the frenzied fighters blocking his path, but it was hopeless. He snatched a sling from his belt, loaded it with a lead bullet-and the Red Wizard stroked his tattooed forearm. Once again, he disappeared.

  His departure left Anton with nothing to do but slaughter his share of the remaining Thayans as rapidly as he could. To his relief, he and his comrades needed only a few more heartbeats to clear the pier. Afterward, he grabbed Captain Clayhill by the arm and dragged her onto dry land, beyond the statue. The hum of the city popped back into his ears.

  “One of the Red Wizards got away,” Anton panted. “He’ll warn the others. We have to keep moving.” Every moment they delayed gave warriors time to wake, grab their weapons, assemble into squads, and take up defensive positions. Every second was another chance for a wizard or priest to weave a spell.

  “I know,” the captain said. She beckoned urgently, yelling curses even though she must have known her crew couldn’t hear her, and the pirates came scrambling onto the shore. She barked a few orders, and they charged up the slope toward the buildings ahead, dividing into teams as they went to envelop the entire complex quickly.

  Anton and his companions smashed open doors and killed whomever they found beyond. Some of the pirates tried to linger and search for loot, but he bellowed at them to stay with the squad.

  In the center of a small garden with gravel paths, a marble fountain abruptly emitted an eye-watering stink. “Run!” he cried, an instant before the marble basin spewed acid like a geyser. Most of the freebooters reacted quickly enough to avoid all but the diffuse, merely blistering fringe of the discharge. But one man toppled, clothing and skin dissolving. His body was covered in bubbling, sizzling burns, and his eyes melted in their sockets.

  A wisp of spider web enlarged without warning, snaring the men it engulfed in sticky cable. The arachnid at the center grew as well and, when it was as big as a cat, scuttled to bite the first of its prisoners. Straining, Anton managed to slip the cutlass through some of the mesh restraining him, and the preternaturally keen edge severed the gluey strands. He slashed himself free, cut once more, and split the spider’s eight-eyed mask just as it started to pounce at him.

  It was all grueling, frantic, desperate work, and from a certain perspective, it was all inconsequential. Where were the rest of the enemy spellcasters? They were the chief threat, the adversaries the pirates truly needed to confront.

  They reached the end of the lane running between two rows of low sheds and buildings, peeked out into the open space beyond, and at last Anton saw the Red Wizards.