Gerik looked at the bag, then took it from the old man and set it on the table. Everything he had brought into the huts was there, even the few brass coins and the silver tower. Of course, stealing among the pirates was punished in ways that made a sentence to the arena seem a slap on the wrist.…
“Naid barrers, sor?”
Gerik shook his head. He needed no one to help him navigate the path downhill to his quarters, let alone carry him. He lifted the bag and for a moment almost changed his mind; his leg was strong enough for unburdened walking, but running or carrying loads would take longer.
He rummaged out three of the brasses and handed them to the man. “More when I’ve made another voyage and have a share or two to spend.”
“Ach. End whan thet, sor?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d sworn oath only to Synsaga, which protected him ashore and allowed him a place aboard Golden Troll or Sea-cleaver. To the other captains, he was an Istarian of uncertain skill and no loyalty they were bound to recognize. Synsaga was two days overdue already, would not be making landfall in this storm, and might take more than the usual time repairing itself before going out again.
“Warrd?”
“Word of honor,” Gerik said. The man had done more for him than for the other five in the huts, though two of those were in no condition to demand much. One was dying of a gut wound from a brawl, another of some ailment doing vicious things inside his brain and requiring him to be strapped to his bed half the time. Even then, when the fits took him, his howls frightened birds and apes a league away.
Dignity forced Gerik to walk swiftly down the path until he was out of sight of the gate to the healing huts. By then he’d drawn blood from his lips at the pain of muscles pushed beyond their limits.
Must find some way of exercising them, he thought, where no one can see or hear until I’ve regained the lost ground.
He had been hard and fit for a man whose work was mostly counting timber in the city dockyards. Haimya would never have looked at him otherwise. But the pirates had a standard of fitness all their own, and it had taken six months for Gerik to reach it.
In that time he had gained muscle, lost fat and sweat, and come to understand just what Haimya must put herself through to keep her warrior’s body. Woman’s body, too-more than woman enough to disturb his thoughts, in ways that had no place on this slippery path.
Gerik put memories of Haimya from his mind and turned his attention to descending the slope. Out of sight of the huts and everyone else, he could slow his pace to one his muscles could endure. That took him to the most thickly grown part of the path just as the first thunder rolled in the west.
He looked up, eyes rising with the birds as they flew up screaming. The zenith was darker now than it had been, but not so dark that he missed a great black-winged shape soaring into view, then vanishing in the clouds. At least he thought he saw it, and he had been at least as sure the other three times as well.
He continued his descent. What had he seen, always briefly and today for hardly more than a blink as it plunged into the clouds? Long wings, a long tail, a crested head, all a black that seemed to swallow even the dim storm light.
No bird ever took that shape or grew so large. It seemed too large and the wrong shape for a griffon. That left only one possibility.
A black dragon. A creature of evil, a minion of Takhisis-and a thought cold enough to make a man forget the jungle heat for a moment.
The chill passed. A black dragon was also impossible. All the dragons, good and evil alike, had left the world after Huma wielded the dragonlance and died bringing victory to the forces of good. All were in dragonsleep, none to be waked except by the gods.
At least that was what Gerik Ginfrayson had heard. And he had heard that this came from wise men, clerics and wizards, who knew as much about the matter as mortal men could learn.
Either such men were wrong, or what Ginfrayson had seen passing overhead four times was not a dragon.
Another chill thought struck him. Synsaga’s little pirate village had no gods at its command, and was probably not even in the favor of many (save perhaps Hiddukel). But it had a renegade sorcerer, who received gold, slaves, food, and labor as though he were actually doing something useful for the pirates!
Had Fustiar the Renegade found a way to break dragonsleep?
If so, it was a secret to which Gerik would be years being admitted. But tongues wagged when the wine flowed freely, and Gerik could feign both drinking and drunkenness. The wine would flow freely when Synsaga returned, and Gerik could certainly enter that feast, with a sober head and receptive ears.
* * * * *
Pirvan dared not ask how he looked after Lady Eskaia’s entrance. He hardly needed to.
Both women took one look at him and burst into wild laughter. There was nothing ladylike or dignified about the laughter. They looked and sounded like two streetgirls who had just played a fine, profitable jest on a man.
Pirvan waited with as much dignity as he could manage while the women laughed themselves breathless. He thought of taking advantage of the unlocked door and the women’s distraction to escape. But to where? And how, seeing that he had neither decent garb nor weapons and that all in the house were likely awake and alert.
Also, if the women were not entirely out of their right senses-well, he had never wittingly struck a woman in his life, and was tolerably certain he had never gravely hurt one by chance. (Indeed, he was more sure of that than about having left behind no unlawful children.)
It was at this point that Pirvan noted that Lady Eskaia had put down on the floor-put down, the gods be praised, not dropped-a robust wooden platter loaded with cheese, bread, ham, pickles, ripe red grapes, and a bowl of something that looked appetizing even though Pirvan could not have said what it was.
For a moment he tried to maintain his dignity. Then the smell of the bread and the strong cheese reached his nostrils. It had been days since he’d eaten more than water and biscuits. He snatched up a piece of cheese in one hand, a piece of ham in the other, and crammed both of them in his mouth with neither the dignity nor even the manners of a child of five.
By the time Pirvan had started chewing, the women were no longer laughing. Their faces were an identical red, Lady Eskaia’s normally carefully arranged hair was a tangled mess, and Haimya seemed to have the hiccups. But they were in a state where a man might hope to ask a question and even, if he was sufficiently lucky and made the proper prayers to the right god, have it answered.
“Lady Eskaia, I am grateful for your hospitality and your presence,” Pirvan said. “As I made my promise in the hearing of you both, it will be kept. Remember, though, what I asked of you.”
Eskaia touched her hair and grimaced as she realized the shambles she’d made of it. Then her jaw set. It was a well-shaped jaw, in which were set two rows of even white teeth. Had she been born a poor man’s daughter, she would still have been a much-sought marriage prize.
“Very well. But I must ask one further promise-indeed, an oath by all you hold most in honor. That you will never speak of what I am about to tell you, unless Haimya, I, or my father gives you leave.”
Josclyn Encuintras being suddenly brought into the matter briefly unsettled Pirvan. He sensed that what he was about to hear would unsettle him even more. But a promise was a promise; an honest thief could not live in a world where promises were not kept.
Pirvan swore himself to silence, invoking Gilean and Shinare, then looked at Eskaia. “My silver, your service.”
Haimya looked shocked. Eskaia stuck out her tongue at him. Then she sobered.
“It is a matter of what the pirates of Crater Gulf may be doing. Or, rather, what they may be having done for them …”