“Keep talking, friend,” Regis replied, “and Bruenor and your wife will wonder, years hence, why we didn’t return.”
CHAPTER 7
FAITH IN THE BETTER ANGELS
W e go with the rising sun and the morning tide,” Lord Brambleberry said to the gathering in the great room of his estate, “to deal a blow to the pirates as never before!”
The guests, lords and ladies all, lifted their crystal goblets high in response, but only after a moment of whispering and shrugging, for Brambleberry’s invitation had mentioned nothing about any grand adventure. Those shrugs fast turned to nods as the news settled in, however, for rumors had been growing around “impatient Lord Brambleberry” for many months. He had made no secret of his desire to transform good fortune into great deed.
Up to that point, though, his blather had been considered the typical boasting of almost any young lord of Waterdeep, a game to impress the ladies, to create stature where before had been only finery. Many in the room carried reputations as worthy heroes, after all, though some of them had never set foot outside of Waterdeep, except traveling in luxury and surrounded by an army of private guards. Some other lords with actual battlefield credentials to their names had gained such notoriety over the bodies of hired warriors, only arriving on the scene of a victory after the fact for the heroic pose to be captured on a painter’s canvas.
There were real heroes in the room, to be sure. Morus Brokengulf the Younger, paladin of great renown and well-earned reputation, had just returned to Waterdeep to inherit his family’s vast holdings. He stood talking to Rhiist Majarra, considered the greatest bard of the city, perhaps of the entire Sword Coast, though he’d barely passed his twentieth year. Across the way from them, the ranger Aluar Zendos, “who could track a shadow at midnight,” and the famous Captain Rulathon tapped glasses of fine wine and commiserated of great adventures and heroic deeds. These men, usually the least boastful of the crowd, knew the difference between the posers and the doers, and often relished in such gossip, and up to that moment they had been evenly split on which camp the striking young Lord Brambleberry would ultimately inhabit.
It was hard not to take him seriously at that moment, however, for standing beside the young Brambleberry was Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite, well known in Waterdeep and very highly considered among the nobility. If Brambleberry sailed with Deudermont, his adventure would be no ruse. Those true heroes in the room offered solemn nods of approval to each other, but quietly, for they didn’t want to spoil the excited and humorously inane conversations erupting all across the hall, squealed in the corners under cover of the rousing symphony or whispered on the dance floor.
Roaming the floor, Deudermont and Robillard took it all in; the wizard even cast an enchantment of clairaudience so that they could better spy on the amusing exchanges.
“He’s not satisfied with wealth and wine,” one lady of court whispered. She stood in the corner near a table full of tallglasses, which she not-so-gracefully imbibed one after another.
“He’ll add the word ‘hero’ to his title or they’ll put him in the cold ground for trying,” said her friend, with hair bound up in a woven mound that climbed more than a foot above her head.
“To get such fine skin dirty at the feet of an ogre….” another decried.
“Or bloody at the end of a pirate’s sword,” yet another lamented. “So much the pity.”
They all stopped chattering at once, all eyes going to Brambleberry, who swept across their field of view on the dance floor, gracefully twirling a pretty young thing. That brought a collective sigh from the four, and the first remarked, “One would expect the older and wiser lords to temper this one. So much a waste!”
“So much to lose.”
“The young fool.”
“If he is in need of physical adventure….” the last said, ending in a lewd smile, and the others burst out in ridiculous tittering.
The wizard waved his hand to dismiss the clairaudience dweomer, having heard more than enough.
“Their attitude makes it difficult to take the young lord’s desires seriously,” Robillard remarked to Deudermont.
“Or easier to believe that our young friend needs more than this emptiness to sustain him,” the captain answered. “Obviously he needs no further laurels to be invited to any of their beds. Which is a blessing, I say, for there is nothing more dangerous than a young man trying to hero himself into a lady’s arms.”
Robillard narrowed his eyes as he turned to his companion. “Spoken like a young man I knew in Luskan, so many years ago, when the world was calmer and my life held a steady cadence.”
“Steady and boring,” Deudermont replied without hesitation. “You remember that young man well because of the joy he has brought to you, stubborn though you have been through it all.”
“Or perhaps I just felt pity for the fool.”
With a helpless chuckle, Deudermont lifted his tallglass, and Robillard tapped it with his own.
Without fanfare, the four ships glided out of Waterdeep Harbor to the wider waters of the Sea of Swords the next morning. No trumpets heralded their departure, no crowds gathered on the docks to bid them farewell, and even the Chaplain Blessing for favorable winds and gentle swells was kept quiet, held aboard each ship instead of the common prayer on the wharves with sailors and dockhands alike.
From the deck of Sea Sprite, Robillard and Deudermont regarded the skill and discipline, or lack thereof, of Brambleberry’s three ships as they tried to form a tight squadron. At one point, all three nearly collided. The quick recovery left Brambleberry’s flagship, formerly Quelch’s Folly,and since lettered with the additional “—Justice,” with tangled rigging. Brambleberry had wanted to rename the ship entirely, but Deudermont had dissuaded him. Such practices were considered bad luck, after all.
“Keep us well back,” Deudermont ordered his helmsman. “And to port. Always in the deeper water.”
“Afraid that we might have to dodge their wreckage?” Robillard quipped.
“They are warriors, not seamen,” Deudermont replied.
“If they fight as well as they sail, they’ll be corpses,” Robillard said and looked out to sea, leaning on the rail. He added, “Probably will be anyway,” under his breath, but loudly enough so that Deudermont heard.
“This adventure troubles you,” said Deudermont. “More than usual, I mean. Do you fear Arklem Greeth and your former associates so much?”
Robillard shrugged and let the question hang in the air for a few heartbeats before replying, “Perhaps I fear the absence of Arklem Greeth.”
“How so? We know now what we have suspected for some time. Surely the people of the Sword Coast will be better off without such treachery.”
“Things are not always as simple as they seem.”
“I ask again, how so?”
Robillard merely shrugged.
“Or is it that you hold some affinity for your former peer?”
Robillard turned to look at the captain and said, “He is a beast…a lich, an abomination.”
“But you fear his power.”
“He is not a foe to be taken lightly, nor are his minions,” the wizard replied. “But I’m assured that our young Lord Brambleberry there has assembled a capable and potent force, and, well, you have me beside you, after all.”
“Then what? What do you mean when you say that you fear the absence of Greeth? What do you know, my friend?”
“I know that Arklem Greeth is the absolute ruler of Luskan. He has established his boundaries.”