“Sea Sprite!” they cried as one, pointing and jumping.
Morik the Rogue and Bellany rushed to Thrice Lucky’s rail to take in the awful scene.
“What are we to do?” Morik asked incredulously. “Where is Maimun?” He knew the answer, and so did many others echoing that very sentiment, for their captain had gone ashore less than an hour earlier.
Some crewmen called for lifelines, to weigh anchor to rush to the aid of the crew in the water. Bellany did likewise and started for a lifeboat, but Morik grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her to face him.
“Make me fly!” he bade her, and she looked at him curiously.
“Give me flight!” he screamed. “You’ve done it before!”
“Flight?”
“Do it!”
Bellany rubbed her hands together and tried to focus, tried to remember the words as the insanity around her only multiplied. She reached out and touched Morik on the shoulder and the man leaped up to the rail and out from the ship.
He didn’t fall into the water, though, but flew out across the bay. He scanned, trying to figure out where he was most needed, then cut across for the downed vessel herself, fearing that some of the crew might be trapped aboard her.
Then he crossed over a form in the water, just under the surface but sinking fast, and willed himself to stop. He slapped his hand down, plunging it through the waves, and grabbed hard on the fine fabric of a wizard’s robes.
“Ah, the glorious pain,” Kensidan taunted. Deudermont again tried to pull himself up and the Crow pecked him hard on the forehead, slamming him back to the floor.
The room’s door banged open. “No!” cried a voice familiar to both men. “Let him go!”
“Are you mad, young pirate?” the Crow cackled as he turned to regard Maimun. He spun back and slammed Deudermont hard again, smashing him flat to the floor.
Maimun responded with a sudden and brutal charge, flashing sword leading the way. Kensidan beat his wings and tried to extricate himself from the close quarters, but Maimun’s fury was too great and his advantage too sudden and complete. The wings battered around the perimeter of the fight, but Maimun’s sword cut a narrower and more direct line.
In the span of a few heartbeats, Maimun had Kensidan pinned at the end of his blade, and when Kensidan tried to turn the sword with his beak, Maimun got the blade inside the Crow’s mouth.
Given that awkward and devastating clutch, Kensidan could offer no further resistance.
Maimun, breathing hard, clearly outraged, held the pose and the pin for a long breath. “I give you your life,” he said finally, easing the blade just a bit. “You have the city—there will be no challenge. I will go, and I’m taking Captain Deudermont with me.”
Kensidan looked over at the battered and bloody form of Deudermont and started to cackle, but Maimun stopped that with a prod of his well-placed blade.
“You will allow us clear passage to our ships, and for our ships out of Luskan Harbor.”
“He is already dead, fool, or soon enough to be!” the Crow argued, slurring every word, as he spouted them around the hard steel of a fine blade.
The words nearly buckled Maimun’s knees. His thoughts swirled back in time to his first meeting with the captain. He had stowed away onSea Sprite, fleeing a demon intent on his destruction. Deudermont had allowed him to stay. Sea Sprite’s crew, generous to a fault, had not abandoned him when they’d learned the truth of his ordeal, even when they discerned that having Maimun aboard made them targets of the powerful demon and its many deadly allies.
Captain Deudermont had saved young Maimun, without a doubt, and had taken him under his wing and trained him in the ways of the sea.
And Maimun had betrayed him. Though he had never expected it to come to so tragic an end, the young pirate captain could not deny the truth. Paid by Kensidan, Maimun had sailed Arabeth to Quelch’s Folly. Maimun had played a role in the catastrophe that had befallen Luskan, and in the catastrophe that had lain Captain Deudermont low before him.
Maimun turned back sharply on Kensidan and pressed the sword in tighter. “I will have your word, Crow, that I will be allowed free passage, with Deudermont and Sea Sprite beside me.”
Kensidan stared at him hatefully with those black crow eyes. “Do you understand who I am now, young pirate?” he replied slowly, and as evenly as the prodding blade allowed. “Luskan is mine. I am the Pirate King.”
“And you’re to be the dead Pirate King if I don’t get your word!” Maimun assured him.
But even as Maimun spoke, Kensidan all but disappeared beneath him, almost instantly reverting to the form of a small crow. He rushed out from under the overbalanced Maimun and with a flap of his wings, fluttered up to light on the windowsill across the room.
Maimun wrung his hands on his sword hilt, grimacing in frustration as he turned to regard the Crow, expecting that his world had just ended.
“You have my word,” Kensidan said, surprising him.
“I have nothing with which to barter,” Maimun stated.
The Crow shrugged, a curious movement from the bird, but one that conveyed the precise sentiment clearly enough. “I owe Maimun ofThrice Lucky that much, at least,” said Kensidan. “So we will forget this incident, eh?”
Maimun could only stare at the bird.
“And I look forward to seeing your sails in my harbor again,” Kensidan finished, and he flew away out the window.
Maimun stood there stunned for a few moments then rushed to Deudermont, falling to his knees beside the broken man.
His first attacks after seeing Regis fall were measured, his first defenses almost half-hearted. Drizzt could hardly find his focus, with his friend lying there in the gutter, could hardly muster the energy necessary to stand his ground against the dwarf warrior.
Perhaps sensing that very thing, or perhaps thinking it all a ploy, Athrogate didn’t press in those first few moments of rejoined battle, measuring his own strikes to gain strategic advantage rather than going for the sudden kill.
His mistake.
For Drizzt internalized the shock and the pain, and as he always had before, took it and turned the tumult into a narrowly-focused burst of outrage. His scimitars picked up their pace, the strength of his strikes increasing proportionately. He began to work Athrogate as he had before the fall of Regis, moving side to side and forcing the dwarf to keep up.
But the dwarf did match his pace, fighting Drizzt to a solid draw strike after thrust after slash.
And what a glorious draw it was to any who might have chanced to look on. The combatants spun with abandon, scimitars and morningstars humming through the air. Athrogate hit a wall again, the spiked ball smashing the wood to splinters. He hit the cobblestones before the backward-leaping drow and crushed them to dust.
And there Drizzt scored his second hit, Twinkle nicking Athrogate’s cheek and taking away one of his great beard’s braids.
“Ah, but ye’ll pay for that, elf!” the dwarf roared, and on he came.
To the side, Regis groaned.
He was alive.
He needed help.
Drizzt turned away from Athrogate and fled across the alleyway, the dwarf in close pursuit. The drow leaped to the wall, throwing his shoulders back and planting one foot solidly as if he meant to run right up the side of the structure.
Or, to Athrogate’s discerning and seasoned battle sensibilities, to flip a backward somersault right over him.
The dwarf pulled up short and whirled, shouting “Bwaha! I’m knowin’ that move!”
But Drizzt didn’t fly over him and come down in front of him, and the drow, who had not used his planted foot to push off, and who had not brought his second foot up to further climb, replied, “I know you know.”