Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel (2 page)

“Check her pockets,” said Helgre.

Gareth obeyed, wiping his hands on the woman’s leggings before gingerly dipping his fingers into the pockets roughly stitched into the fabric at the hips. There was nothing there, but, beneath the thin linen of the blood-soaked shirt, Gareth found a small leather pouch, the strap that had secured it around its owner’s neck severed
by the same blow that had ended the woman’s life. Helgre extended her hand over his shoulder, and Gareth placed the sticky pouch on her palm. He didn’t look at her but heard the clink of a few coins as she opened it.

“Over the side with her,” she said, and he heard her walk away, likely enough to rejoin Ping at the helm. He shivered. Helgre’s voice was beautiful, a singer’s voice, deep and clear as the sound of temple bells. It was hard to reconcile such a voice with the brutality of the woman who possessed it.

And never, not even on warm summer evenings when the stars were scattered thick in the sky, the lanterns glowed golden on the deck, and the crew, forgetting their harsh profession, sang the songs of many lands, not even then had Gareth ever heard Helgre sing.

Gareth quickly tugged the wet red fabric of the woman’s shirt over her exposed breast. He didn’t want to drag her over the deck, but he was worried that the deeply bisected neck would give way and the head fall off if he picked her up in his arms. As carefully as he could, he lifted the body by the feet and pulled it over the deck, trying not to let the dead sailor bump against the boards. There was a great pool of semi-congealed blood where her body had lain, and a scarlet smear followed as he dragged her, as if pointing him out to any gods overhead. Gareth swallowed nervously, although he had not been the one to cut the sailor’s throat.

He’d done enough under Ping’s command to earn condemnation.

A space was notched into the railing around the deck, with a hinged door that could be opened and shut for
ease of loading and unloading. Another of the
Orcsblood
crew helped Gareth roll the body to the edge. Below them in the pink-tinged water, sea creatures thrashed, fighting for a mouthful of the unexpected feast the pirates’ raid on the merchantman had created.

Gareth swallowed hard as he shoved the corpse clear of the ship. Limp-jointed as a doll, the woman fell, hit the churning water, and was tugged under the surface in a flash of silver scales and teeth. Almost unconsciously, he muttered a prayer half-remembered from his childhood. As he raised his head, his eyes met those of the other crewman, who had only recently joined Ping’s crew. Ivor was his name, he recalled—a well-built, dusky man from Turmish, with the muscles of a dockworker.

Sweat prickled cold on Gareth’s body. Ping didn’t tolerate sentimentality in his crew.

Ivor held his gaze a few seconds and nodded once. Gareth relaxed.

They both looked at the merchant ship lashed to the
Orcsblood’s
side, her decks smeared with the blood of her defenders and dotted here and there with the fallen. Movement down the side attracted Gareth’s attention, and he saw Helgre grab a rope and swing from the
Orcsblood’s
deck to the other, landing lightly with a skill born of years of experience. She drew a long knife from her belt and prowled the silent deck, examining the bodies for any sign of life. As he watched, she bent over one twisted form. Her knife flashed in the sun, and Gareth fancied he heard an agonized groan from the man at her feet.

She glanced their way, and both Gareth and Ivor instinctively backed away from the side, looking
away from her and up into the half-furled sails of the merchantman.

“Nice lines,” said Ivor. “It’s a pity she’s to burn.”

“Agreed,” returned Gareth, with more feeling than he intended.

He was beginning to regret signing on to the
Orcsblood
. It seemed a good idea at the time—bad luck and worse timing had wiped out his profits on the goods he’d brought from Turmish to sell in Mulmaster. Everybody had been willing to pay fair coin, but unfortunately not for the goods he offered. So, when he was bereft of everything but a change of clothes, a fair sword, and a better dagger, Ping’s bargain, put forward over the greasy and pocked wooden table in an ill-lit and sour-smelling tavern in the insalubrious district of Mulmaster, sounded appealing.

He would have a fair share in all the booty and a head start if he decided to leave.

“You’ll understand that in my business an encounter with a … former colleague, shall we say … could be embarrassing, on either side,” the pirate said, his grin showing an impressive expanse of ivory teeth that looked as if they’d been filed to points. “Especially if a former member of my jolly crew had decided to ally himself—or herself—with more or less law-abiding associates. Should we part ways, it’s better we don’t meet again.”

It sounded reasonable, and the offer of a life sweeter than a slave’s, if not as honest, was too good to refuse. Gareth was a realist and had lived a bandit’s life before this. He resigned himself to piracy aboard the
Orcsblood
, even when he met Helgre. Ping’s second-in-command
greeted him pleasantly enough, but no warmth reached her penetrating gray eyes. It was the cold expression in those eyes that chilled Gareth, not the vicious, long-healed slash that marred the left side of her face from eyebrow to chin, twisting the corner of her mouth into a one-sided smile.

Nevertheless, he had left childish ideals in childhood, and serving under a killer was better than starving virtuously, or rotting in prison for debt.

But Ping’s practice of destroying ships and slaughtering any potential witnesses sickened even Gareth’s sensibilities, and he soon suspected anyone who chose to leave Ping’s crew was not in fact given a fair “head start” but disappeared, likely with a slit throat, in the wake of the
Orcsblood
in the middle of the night. He’d made discreet inquiries, but the other members of the crew were reticent on the subject.

Someone struck him lightly on the shoulder, and he turned to see Din, a tall, thin-faced easterner who had signed on shortly before Gareth. He grinned and held out a bucket. His naturally pale skin had burned, then browned, in the months they’d spent on the
Orcsblood
, and he didn’t seem at all disconcerted by the slaughter of the merchantman’s crew or passengers.

“Ping says to sluice down the decks before we unload,” he said as Gareth took the bucket. “Clean decks for clean cargo.”

Gareth nodded and lowered the bucket over the side on its rope, avoiding the pink stain where the bodies had been dumped. The waters were quieter now, the victims of Ping’s ferocity sunk to the bottom and the scavengers’
hunger sated for now. Ivor found another bucket and did likewise, and together they had the deck clean of blood in a short time.

It was late afternoon before they had the cargo—silks from Imaskar and a load of exotic woods—piled on deck. The shipwright had already scavenged anything he could use from the merchantman, and now thick black coils of smoke rose from the hapless ship as she was cut free of the
Orcsblood
. A breeze was freshening, and crew clambered like spiders in the sheets above, for Ping wanted to be long gone before the smoke from the burning ship attracted undue attention.

Others unpacked the crates while Ping and Helgre examined the goods. The crew was cheerful. The slaughter was over, and there would be a generous bonus for all when Ping sold the booty to his contacts on the north shores of the Moonsea. In the meantime, there was food and drink for all, and their captain was pleased with their work.

Gareth stood, stretching his sore shoulders, and watched the merchantman burn. He’d had more than his share of fighting and lifting loads this day. Ivor joined him as a spurt of flame burst from the merchantman’s side, and the drifting vessel listed heavily to one side.

“Why waste a good vessel when we could strip her of identifying marks and sell her?” Ivor kept his eyes on the doomed ship, as if he were speaking to himself.

“Each ship has her idiosyncrasies,” said Gareth, keeping his voice indifferent. “Ping knows she would be identified eventually.”

“But we would be long gone with a decent purse before that happened. And why kill crew and passengers
who could be ransomed, or sold far south in the Beastlands, or anywhere the slave trade flourishes?”

Was it his imagination, or was there anger beneath Ivor’s carefully modulated voice?

“It does seem wasteful,” Gareth said, blinking against the ash in the air as the prow of the merchantman began her long, inexorable slide beneath the surface of the Moonsea.

Two tendays later, Gareth Jadaren didn’t have time for moralizing as he blinked the blood out of his eyes. The cut across his forehead smarted, but he’d been lucky. The sellsword had slipped in the gore on the surface of the deck, and the blow meant to split his skull glanced sideways. Gareth had skewered the hapless sellsword as he lay sprawled and stunned, and his sword still quivered in the wooden deck, piercing the mercenary through the torso.

Gareth wiped away another handful of blood, looking around for something to staunch the bleeding. His late opponent wore a jaunty twist of a scarf around his neck that wasn’t too grimy, so Gareth bent and flicked it away with two fingers, wadding the scarf against the wound. It stung and would leave a scar, but that was of little consequence.

He glanced about the deck of the
Starbound
. The smell of char was heavy, and small flakes of burned canvas floated in the air. The remaining masts were blackened, and the mainmast lay across the deck, embers glowing along its split-asunder length. Here and there
the remaining defenders of the
Starbound
fought in fierce pockets of resistance, but they were outnumbered and couldn’t last long.

Ivor loped across the deck toward Gareth. The long knife he preferred for close work was clotted with gore to the hilt; he must have been on mop-up duty. Gareth swallowed the acid that rose in his throat at the sight. He shouldn’t let it affect him—he knew he wouldn’t long survive his stint on the
Orcsblood
if he was maiden-squeamish about slaughter. And he did mean to survive and accumulate coin enough to start an honest—well, mostly honest—business far from here, enough to protect him and his from the brutality of such as Ping, and those whom Ping succeeded in making like himself.

Ivor pointed at the bow, where Ping stood surveying the carnage.

“Ping wants us to check belowdecks,” said Ivor, catching his breath. He surveyed the man Gareth had affixed to the deck.

“Lucky blow,” he said in approval, and kneeled to wipe his blade on the mercenary’s trousers. From the bow, Ping caught Gareth’s eye and pointed at a spot on the deck to Gareth’s right. Gareth glanced that way and saw a trapdoor that had been flung open, with the rope that secured it snaked carelessly across the decking. Ping crooked his fingers and thrust his palm down. His meaning was clear.

Gareth nodded. Ivor sheathed his knife and drew a short sword, and Gareth pulled his weapon from his late opponent. Together they approached the trapdoor cautiously.

Ivor pointed at the deck. Dark splotches led directly to the gloomy entrance. When they glanced down into the dark maw, they saw fresh drops of blood soaked into the worn wooden steps leading below.

Gareth ventured down, making sure his booted foot was secure on one step before he attempted another. Four steps down he gestured to Ivor to follow. He heard the steps creak under the Turmish man’s weight. Halfway down he paused, blinking to accustom himself to the dim light of the ship’s interior. Squinting, he surveyed the hold and the various-size boxes piled along the walls. The only sound he could hear was Ivor’s regular breathing behind him. He sidestepped the rest of the way down, making it to the slippery floor without incident.

“Nobody here,” he whispered over his shoulder to Ivor.

He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. On pure instinct, he ducked, hitting the slimy floor, froglike, as a long, snaky stretch of blue-green lightning seared the space where his head had been. Ivor yelled something inarticulate as the step he was standing on shattered and he fell the rest of the way into the hold, landing with an oath heavily beside Gareth.

Something moved in the shadows before them. Sword extended and poised, Gareth rose quickly, knees bent and ready to move. Ivor was still cursing and trying to untangle himself from his weapon. An odd smell, not quite like a campfire and not quite like an alchemist’s shop, but evocative of them both, lingered in the musty air. No doubt it was due to the strange electrical attack.

Between two tall boxes a pale shadow shifted, then
advanced into the dim light that the hatch overhead admitted. Half-light illuminated a fierce, feral face. At first Gareth thought it was an elf, or perhaps a massively overgrown gnome. But this creature was far more gaunt than any elf or creature of the Feywild. Its sunken cheeks and high, sharp cheekbones gave it a predatory look, and its nose was reduced to an abbreviated bony ridge with two elongated slits for nostrils. Its huge black eyes glittered with desperation and hatred. One hand was clutched tight to its chest, as if it had been injured, and the other was stretched toward Gareth, the thin fingers impossibly long, the fingernails curved and sharp as claws. It stared at him, hissing in pain or, with his luck, preparing another deadly, electric blast.