the Light, lad, I know we’re here for the king’s nephew an’ all, but I don’t like the idea of leavin’ them women here. Prolly got ’em all from the ships they looted and scuppered. Wasn’t no way to get a proper body count on them what got killed, on account of the sharks.”
Darrick gritted his teeth, trying not to think of the abuse the women must have endured at the coarse hands of the pirates. “I know. If there’s a way, Maldrin, we’ll be after having them women free of all this, too.”
“There’s a good lad,” Maldrin said. “I know this crew ye picked, Darrick. They’re good men. Ever last one of them. They wouldn’t be above dyin’ to be heroes.”
“We’re not here to die,” Darrick said. “We’re here to kill pirates.”
“An’ play hell with ’em if’n we get the chance.” Mat’s grin glimmered in the darkness. “They don’t look as though they’re takin’ the business of guard duty too serious down here in the ruins.”
“They’ve got all them spotters along the river,” Maldrin agreed. “If we’d tried bringin’ Lonesome Star upriver, why, we’d be sure to be caught. They ain’t been thinkin’ about a small force of determined men.”
“A small force is still a small force,” Darrick said. “But while that allows us to move around quick and quiet, we’re not going to be much for standing and fighting. A dozen men we are, and that won’t take long for killing if we go at this thing wrong and unlucky.” Moving the spyglass on, he marked the boundaries of the ruined city in his mind. Then he returned his attention to the docks.
Two small docks floated in the water, buoyed on watertight barrels. From the wreckage thrust up farther east of the floating docks, Darrick believed that more permanent docks had once existed there. The broken striations of the land above the river indicated that chunks had cracked off in the past. The permanent docks probably resided in the harbor deep enough that they posed no threats to shallow-drawing ships.
Two block-and-tackle rigs hung from the lip of the riverbank thirty feet above the decks of the three cogs. Stacks of crates and hogshead barrels occupied space beside the block-and-tackles. A handful of men guarded the stores, but they were occupied in a game of dice, all of them hunkered down to watch the outcome of every roll. Every now and again a cheer reached Darrick’s ears. They had two lanterns between them, placed at opposite ends of the gaming area.
“Which one of ’em do ye think is Barracuda?” Maldrin asked. “That’s the ship that pirate said the boy was on, right?”
“Aye,” Darrick replied, “and I’m wagering that Barracuda is the center ship.”
“The one with all the guards,” Mat said.
“Aye.” Darrick collapsed the spyglass and put it back into his waist pouch, capping both ends. Glass ground as well as the lenses he had in the spyglass was hard to come by out of Kurast.
“Are ye plannin’, then, Darrick?” Mat asked.
“As I ever am,” Darrick agreed.
Looking more sober, Mat asked, “This ain’t after bein’ as much of a bit of a lark as we’d have hoped, is it, then?”
“No,” Darrick agreed. “But I still think we can get her done.” He rose from the hunkered position. “Me and you first, then, Mat. Quick and quiet as we can. Maldrin, can you still move silent, or have you got too broad abeam from Cook’s pastries?”
Lonesome Star had a new baker, and the young man’s culinary skills were the stuff of legend within the Westmarch Navy. Captain Tollifer had called in some markers to arrange to have the baker assigned to their ship. Every sailor aboard Lonesome Star had developed a sweet tooth, but Maldrin had been the first to realize the baker actually wanted to learn how to sail and had capitalized on giving him time at the steering wheel in exchange for pastries.
“I may have put on a pound or three in the last month or two,” Maldrin admitted, “but I’ll never get so old or so fat that I can’t keep up with ye young pups. If’n I do, I’ll tie a rope around me neck and dive off the fo’c’sle.”
“Then follow along,” Darrick invited. “We’ll see if we can’t take over that stockpile.”
“Whatever for?” Maldrin grumped.
Darrick started down the grade, staying along the edge of the river. The block-and-tackles and the guards were nearly two hundred yards away. Brush and small trees grew along the high riverbank. Raithen’s pirates had been lazy about clearing more land than necessary.
“Unless I misread those barrels,” Darrick said, “they contain whale oil and whiskey.”
“Be better if they contained some of them wizard’s potions that explode,” Maldrin said.
“We work with what we get,” Darrick said, “and we’ll be glad about it.” He called for Tomas.
“Aye,” Tomas said, drawing up out of the dark shadows.
“Once we give the signal,” Darrick said, “bring the rest of the men in a hurry. We’ll be boarding the middle ship to look for the king’s nephew. When we find him, I’ll be having him off that ship soon as we’re able. Make use of one of those block-and-tackles. Understand?”
“Aye,” Tomas replied. “We’ll fetch him up.”
“I’ll be wanting him in one piece, Tomas,” Darrick threatened, “or it’ll be you explaining to the king how his nephew got himself hurt or dead.”
Tomas nodded. “A babe in arms, Darrick, that’s how we’ll be treatin’ the boy. As safe as his own mother would have him.”
Darrick clapped Tomas on the shoulder and grinned. “I knew I was asking the right man about the job.”
“Just ye be careful down there, an’ don’t go gettin’ too brave until we get down there with ye.”
Darrick nodded, then started down the mountainside toward the riverbank. Mat and Maldrin followed him, as silent as falling snow in the winter.
Raithen followed the steps cut into the riverbank overlooking the boats. When the steps had first been cut from the stone of the mountains, they’d doubtless been of an even keel. Now, after the damage that had been done to the city, they canted to one side, making the descent a tricky one. Since Raithen’s crew had been holed up at Tauruk’s Port, more than one drunken pirate had ended up in the water below, and two of them had been swept away in the current and likely drowned by the time they reached the Gulf of Westmarch.
He carried a lantern to light the way, and the golden glow played over the striations in the mountainside. In the day, the stone shone blue and slate gray, different levels marked by a deepening of color till the rock looked almost charcoal gray before disappearing beneath the river’s edge. The fog maintained a soft presence around him, but he saw the three cogs through it without problem.
Pirates assigned to guard duty squared their shoulders and looked alert as he passed. They deferred to him with politeness he’d beaten into some of them.
A sudden shrill of rope through pulleys alerted him to activity above.
“Look alive, ye great bastards,” a rough voice called down. “I’ve got ye a load of victuals, I have.”
“Send it on down,” a man called on the cog to Raithen’s right. “Been waitin’ on it a dog’s age. Feel like my stomach’s been wrappin’ itself around me backbone.”
Pressing himself against the mountainside, Raithen watched as a short, squat barrel was let go. The pulleys slowed the barrel’s descent, proving that the load was light. The scent of salted pork passed within inches of Raithen.
“Got you a bottle of wine in there, too,” the man called.
“An’ ye damn near hit Cap’n Raithen with it, ye