“Not much,” the half-orc said, his eyes wandering over Sallah and the others like a starving man in a butcher shop. His gaze fell on the blazing sword in Brendis’s hand. “Just all of your blades.”
“Never!” Brendis said, clutching the blade close enough to himself that Kandler could see the young knight starting to sweat. “The sword of a Knight of the Silver Flame is sacred! The twain are not to be parted.”
Ikar nodded, then looked at Sallah with a wolfish grin. “What happened to yours?” The crew around him cackled.
“It’s a long story,” Kandler said.
“Why bargain with these curs?” Brendis said, rattled. “We should cut them down and be done with it.”
Ikar’s lips curled into a sneer. “Look all around you, little knight,” he said cruelly. “Then, if you think you have it in you, do give it your best effort.”
Brendis stared at the half-orc for a moment, then swiveled his neck about. Kandler heard a gasp as the young knight finally spotted the archers stationed around the edges of the roofs overlooking the alley. There had to be a dozen of them at least.
“There were another dozen warriors in the square too,” Xalt said softly.
Brendis flushed red. “My blade will only leave my grasp when the Flame has taken my soul.”
“Don’t tempt them,” Kandler said.
Ikar loosed a throaty laugh. “Fear not, little knight,” he said. “Keep your burning trinket. I’m more interested in something else you have. Hand it over, and I’ll consider it a fair price for escorting you lot from this blasted land.”
“What’s that?” Kandler asked, dreading the answer.
Ikar’s eyes blazed with greed as he spoke. “Why, your warforged there, of course.”
12
“Done!”
Kandler pivoted to goggle at Xalt, unable to believe the warforged had given in to the bandit leader’s demands so quickly.
“No,” he said to Xalt. “If anyone should give himself up for the rest, it should be me.”
Ikar snorted. “I don’t want you, justicar. I want the warforged.”
Xalt stepped forward and put his hand on Kandler’s shoulder. One of his wide fingers was missing, lost when the warforged had first stood up for Kandler and his friends. “You need to move on,” he said. “Fast. You don’t need me.”
“We don’t leave friends behind,” Sallah said over Xalt’s shoulder.
The warforged huffed in pained happiness. “To think that I might have friends.” He fixed Kandler in his ebony eyes. “I will be all right. I can make a new life here. Go.”
“Don’t press your luck,” Ikar hissed at Kandler’s ear. “The warforged wants to stay with us. You get to move on. Everybody’s happy.”
Kandler stared into Xalt’s eyes, wishing that the warforged could somehow wink at him or give him another sort of signal that everything here would be all right. Maybe the warforged didn’t dare risk it with Ikar watching like a hawk, but the justicar felt that Xalt had something in mind other than making himself into the bandits’ slave.
“All right,” he said to Ikar, never taking his eyes off Xalt. “It’s a deal.”
The warforged stared back at him like a statue. Kandler thought he saw him incline his head at him ever so slightly, but it could have just been a trick of the torches’ flickering light.
“Unless you have pressing business here in Metrol, then, I suggest we get moving,” said Ikar. “It’s not safe to be out in Metrol by night.”
“You don’t say,” Burch said.
The half-orc narrowed his eyes at the shifter. “Had you not stirred up the ghostbeasts so well, we’d have already been safe on the other side of the river. You’re fortunate we let our curiosity get the better of us. Otherwise, they’d be feasting on your souls.”
“Lucky us.”
Despite Ikar’s warnings, the streets of Metrol stretched out wide and empty all the way to the shores of the Cyre River. The bandits took the straightest route possible, sticking to the widest roads with the most space around them. They kept their new guests surrounded at all times.
Kandler wondered for a moment why Ikar hadn’t bothered to disarm the lot of them, but when he saw how many bandits there were, his consternation faded. They outnumbered him and his friends at least five to one. If they’d tried to fight their way through them, they’d have been slaughtered.
The river seemed to sneak up on Kandler. One moment, he strolled along wondering when he might see it through the mists that seemed to thicken as they worked their way to the east. The next, they turned a corner, and the mighty river lay there, rolling silently past its banks as it had for millennia.
“We’re not heading for a pier?” Kandler asked.
Ikar snorted. “If you think the ghostbeasts are bad, you should see what waits beneath the surface of the river. The beasties like to congregate around the piers where they think they might find fresh prey. We moor our boats in a new place every day.”
The half-orc pointed to a long, low ship tied up near the water’s edge. It resembled a large cutter in shape and size. Green and gold paint limned its sides, and the polished wood of the deck gleamed in the flickering torchlight. The name Salvation spanned the stern in gold-leaf letters.
As Kandler took in the handsome ship though, he noticed there was something odd about it, although it took him a moment to place just what. Then it hit him: the ship had no sails. It had no rigging and no oars, nor any other visible means of moving through the Cyre’s murky, mist-shrouded waters.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Ikar said proudly. “She takes us up and down the river as fast as an airship, in any kind of weather. We liberated her from the King’s Pier shortly after the Mourning.”
“It—it’s a sprayship,” said Xalt. “It’s amazing.”
Burch smacked the warforged on the shoulder with the back of his hand, then looked at the startled Xalt and jerked his head at the watercraft.
“Ah, yes,” the warforged said. “This is a magically powered craft. It works something like the—um, like an airship. Instead of harnessing a fire elemental, this craft uses a water elemental bound into the aft of the ship. At a command from the person at the tiller, the creature spins rapidly, spraying itself into the water and then spinning back up into the air to do so again.”
Xalt gestured toward a large wooden box that spilled over the ship’s stern. Arcane runes covered its surface, carved deeply into the wood and illuminated with red and gold paints. “The water shoots out of the holding box like it was cascading from a waterfall. The force pushes the ship forward at amazing speeds.”
“Well put,” Ikar said, slapping Xalt on the back hard enough to rattle the warforged’s iron carapace. “I can tell right now you’re going to be an excellent addition to my crew.”
Something grated deep down in Xalt’s chest before he spoke. “I’m sure I’ll make a large impact on your efficiency very soon.” Then, with a saluted touch to his forehead at Kandler and the others he left behind, the warforged crawled on to Salvation’s polished deck.
Sallah squeezed Kandler’s arm. “We can’t let them take him,” she whispered in his ear, low enough that he hoped Ikar, who was busy directing Salvation’s launch, couldn’t hear.
“Patience,” Kandler murmured back to her. “This hasn’t had a chance to play itself out yet.”
Many of Ikar’s scavengers scrambled after the warforged and on to Salvation. At the touch of a green-skinned orc who wore a rune-covered poncho, the ship leaped to life, water flowing slowly out of the end of the box where it spilled into the river’s surface.
“Where do we ride?” Kandler asked as he scanned the length of the ship, looking for the most strategic place to sit.