Yes, Delly Curtie could play the “using” game as well as any, and that was why this blossoming relationship seemed so amazing to him. Because Delly wasn't using him at all, he knew, and he wasn't using her. For the first time in all their history together, the two had merely been sharing each others' company, honestly and without pretense, without an agenda.
And Wulfgar would be a liar indeed if he couldn't admit that he was enjoying it.
A liar Wulfgar would be indeed, and a coward besides, if he couldn't admit that he'd fallen in love with Delly Curtie. Thus, the couple had married. Not formally, but in heart and soul, and Wulfgar knew that this woman, this unlikely companion, had completed him in ways he had never known possible.
“Killer banner up!” came a call from the crow's nest, meaning that this was indeed a pirate vessel ahead of Sea Sprite, for in her arrogance, she was flying a recognized pirate pennant.
With nothing but open water ahead, the ship had no chance of escape. No vessel on the Sword Coast could outrun Sea Sprite, especially with the powerful wizard Robillard sitting atop the back of the flying bridge, summoning gusts of wind repeatedly into the schooner's mainsail.
Wulfgar took a deep breath, and another, but found little in them to help steady his nerves.
/ am a warrior! he reminded himself, but that other truth, that he was a husband and a father, would not be so easily put down.
How strange this change in heart seemed to him. Just a few months before, he had been the terror of Luskan, throwing himself into fights with abandon, reckless to the point of self-destructive. But that was when he had nothing to lose, when he believed that death would take away the pain. Now, it was something even greater than those things he had to lose, it was the realization that if he perished out here, Delly and Colson would suffer.
And for what? the barbarian had to ask himself. For a warhammer, a symbol of a past he wasn't even sure he wanted to recapture?
Wulfgar grabbed tight to the line running back to the foremast, clenching it so tightly his knuckles whitened from the press, and again took in a deep and steadying breath, letting it out as a feral growl. Wulfgar shook the thoughts away, recognizing them as anathema to the heart of a true warrior. Charge in bravely, that was his mantra, his code, and indeed, that was the way a true warrior survived. Overwhelm your enemies, and quickly, and you will likely walk away. Hesitation only provided opportunity for the enemy to shoot you down with arrows and spears.
Hesitation, cowardice, would destroy him.
* * * * * * * * *
Sea Sprite gained quickly on the vessel, and soon it could be seen clearly as a two-masted caravel. How fast that pirate insignia pennant came down when the ship recognized its pursuer!
Sea Sprite's rear catapult and forward ballista both let fly, neither scoring a hit of any consequence, and the pirate responded with a catapult shot of its own, a meager thing that fell far short of the approaching hunter.
“A second volley?” Captain Deudermont asked his ship's wizard. The captain was a tall and straight-backed man with a perfectly trimmed goatee that was still more brown than gray.
“To coax?” Robillard replied. “Nay, if they've a wizard, he is too cagey to be baited, else he would have shown himself already. Move into true range and let fly, and so will I.”
Deudermont nodded and lifted his spyglass to his eye to better see the pirate—and he could make out the individuals on the deck now, scrambling every which way.
Sea Sprite closed with every passing second, her sails gathering up the wind greedily, her prow cutting walls of water high into the air.
Deudermont looked behind, to his gunners manning the catapult on the poop deck. One used a spyglass much like the captain's own, lining up the vessel with a marked stick set before him. He lowered the glass to see the captain and nodded.
“Let fly for mainsail,” Deudermont said to the crewman beside him, and the cry went out, gaining momentum and volume, and both catapult and ballista let fly again. This time, a ball of burning pitch clipped the sails and rigging of the pirate, who was bending hard into a desperate turn, and the ballista bolt, trailing chains, tore through a sail.
A moment later came a brilliant flash, a streak of lightning from Robillard that smacked the pirate's hull at the water line, splintering wood.
“Going defensive!” came Robillard's cry, and he enacted a semitranslucent globe about him and rushed to the prow, shoving past Wulfgar, who was moving amidships.
A responding lightning bolt did come from the pirate, not nearly as searing and bright as Robillard's. Sea Sprite's wizard, considered among the very finest of sea-fighting mages in all Faerыn, had his shields in place to minimize the damage to no more than a black scar on the side of Sea Sprite's prow, one of many badges of honor the proud pirate hunter had earned in her years of service.
The pirate continued its evasive turn, but Sea Sprite, more nimble by far, cut right inside her angle, closing even more rapidly.
Deudermont smiled as he considered Robillard, the wizard nibbing his fingers together eagerly, ready to drop a series of spells to counter any defenses, followed by a devastating fireball that would consume rigging and sails, leaving the pirate dead in the water.
The pirates would likely surrender soon after.
* * * * * * * * * *
A row of archers lined Sea Sprite's side rail, with several standing forward, as obvious targets, Robillard had placed enchantments on these few, making them impervious to unenchanted arrows, and so they were the brave ones inviting the shots.
“Volley as we pass!” the group leader commanded, and every man and woman began checking their draw and their arrows, finding ones that would fly straight and true.
Behind them, Wulfgar paced nervously, anxiously. He wanted this to be done—a perfectly reasonable and rational desire—and yet he cursed himself for those feelings.
“A pop to steady yer hands?” one greasy crewman said to him, holding forth a small bottle of rum, which the boarding party had been passing around.
Wulfgar stared at the bottle long and hard. For months he had hidden inside one of those seemingly transparent things. For months he had bottled up his fears and his horrible memories, a futile attempt to escape the truth of his life and his past.
He shook his head and went back to pacing.
A moment later came the sound of twenty bowstrings humming, the cries of many pirates, and of a couple from Sea Sprite's crew, hit by the exchange.
Wulfgar knew he should be moving into position with the rest of the boarding party, and yet he found he could not. His legs would not walk past conjured images of Delly and Colson. How could he be doing this? How could he be out here, chasing a warhammer, while they waited back in Waterdeep?
The questions sounded loudly and horribly in Wulfgar's mind. All he had once been screamed back at him. He heard the name of Tempus, the barbarian god of war, pounding in his head, telling him to deny his fears, telling him to remember who he was.
With a roar that sent those men closest to him scurrying in fear, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, charged for the rail, and though no boarding party had been called and though Robillard was even then preparing his fiery blast and though the two ships were still a dozen feet apart, with Sea Sprite fast passing, the furious barbarian leaped atop that rail and sprang forward.