"A sail to the south," Drizzt remarked, drawing the woman from her contemplation. Even as Catti-brie looked out from the rail, squinting in a futile attempt to spot the too-distant ship, she heard the cry from the crow's nest confirming the drow's claim.
"What's her course?" Captain Vaines called from somewhere near the middle of the deck.
"North," Drizzt answered quietly so that only Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis could hear.
"North," cried the crewman from the crow's nest a few seconds later.
"Yer eyes've improved in the sunlight," Bruenor remarked.
"Credit Deudermont," Catti-brie explained.
"My eyes," Drizzt added, "and my perceptions of intent."
"What're ye babbling about?" Bruenor asked, but the ranger held up his hand, motioning for silence. He stood staring intently at the distant ship whose sails now appeared to the other three as tiny black dots, barely above the horizon.
"Go and tell Captain Vaines to turn us to the west," Drizzt instructed Regis.
The halfling stood staring for just a moment, then rushed back to find Vaines. Just a minute or so later the friends felt the pull as Quester leaned and turned her prow to the left.
"Ye're just making the trip longer," Bruenor started to complain, but again Drizzt held up his hand.
"She is turning with us, keeping her course to intercept," the drow explained.
"Pirates?" Catti-brie asked, a question echoed by Captain Vaines as he moved up to join the others.
"They are not in trouble, for they cut the water as swiftly as we, perhaps even more so," Drizzt reasoned. "Nor are they a ship of a king's fleet, for they fly no standard, and we are too far out for any coastal patrollers."
"Pirates," Captain Vaines spat distastefully.
"How can ye know all that?" an unconvinced Bruenor demanded.
"Comes from hunting 'em," Catti-brie explained. "And we've hunted more than our share."
"So I heard in Waterdeep," said Vaines, which was why he had agreed to take them aboard for a swift run to Baldur's Gate in the first place. Normally a woman, a dwarf, and a halfling would find no easy-and surely no cheap-passage out of Waterdeep Harbor when accompanied by a dark elf, but among the honest sailors of Waterdeep the names Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie rang out as sweet music.
The approaching ship showed bigger on the horizon now, but it was still too small for any detailed images-except to Drizzt, and to Captain Vaines and the man in the crow's nest, both holding rare and expensive spyglasses. The captain put his to his eye now and recognized the telltale triangular sails. "She's a schooner," he said. "And a light one. She cannot hold more than twenty or so and is no match for us."
Catti-brie considered the words carefully. Quester was a caravel, and a large one at that. She held three strong banks of sails and had a front end long and tapered to aid in her run, but she carried a pair of ballistae, and had thick and strong sides. A slender schooner did not seem much of a match for Quester, to be sure, but how many pirates had said the same about another schooner, Deudermont's Sea Sprite, only to wind up fast filling with sea water?
"Back to the south with us!" the captain called, and Quester creaked and leaned to the right. Soon enough, the approaching schooner corrected her course to maintain her intercepting route.
'Too far to the north," Vaines remarked, striking a pensive pose, one hand coming up to stroke the gray hairs of his beard. "Pirates should not be this far north and should not deign to approach us."
The others, particularly Drizzt and Catti-brie, understood his trepidation. Concerning brute force at least, the schooner and her crew of twenty, perhaps thirty, would seem no match for the sixty of Vaines's crew. But such odds could often be overcome at sea by use of a single wizard, Catti-brie and Drizzt both knew. They had seen Sea Sprite's wizard, a powerful invoker named Robillard, take down more than one ship single-handedly long before conventional weapons had even been used.
"Shouldn't and aren't ain't the same word," Bruenor remarked dryly. "I'm not knowing if they're pirates or not, but they're coming, to be sure."
Vaines nodded and moved back to the wheel with his navigator.
"I'll get me bow and go up to the nest," Catti-brie offered.
"Pick your shots well," Drizzt replied. "Likely there is one, or maybe a couple, who are guiding this ship. If you can find them and down them, the rest might flee."
"Is that the way of pirates?" Regis asked, seeming more than a little confused. "If they even are pirates?"
"That is the way of a lesser ship coming after us because of the crystal shard," Drizzt replied, and then the other two caught on.
"Ye're thinking the damned thing's calling them?" Bruenor asked.
"Pirates take few chances," Drizzt explained. "A light schooner coming after Quester is taking a great chance."
"Unless they got wizards," Bruenor reasoned, for he, too, had understood Captain Vaines's concerns.
Drizzt was shaking his head before the dwarf ever finished. Catti-brie would have been, too, except that she had already run off to retrieve Taulmaril. "A pirate running with enough magical aid to destroy Quester would have long ago been marked," the drow explained. "We would have heard of her and been warned of her before we ever left Waterdeep."
"Unless she is new to the trade or new of the power," Regis reasoned.
Drizzt conceded the point with a nod, but he remained unconvinced, believing that Crenshinibon had brought this new enemy in, as it had brought in so many others in a desperate attempt to wrest the relic away from those who would see it destroyed. The drow looked back across the deck, spotting the familiar form of Catti-brie with Taulmaril, the wondrous Heart-seeker, strapped across her back as she made her nimble way up the knotted rope.
Then he opened his belt pouch and gazed upon the wicked relic, Crenshinibon. How he wished he could hear its call to better understand the enemies it would bring before them.
Quester shuddered suddenly as one of its great ballistae let fly. The huge spear leaped away, skipping a couple times across the water far short of the out-of-range schooner, but close enough to let the sailors aboard her recognize that
Quester had no intention of parlay or surrender.
But the schooner flew on without the slightest course change, splitting the water right beside the spent ballista bolt, even clipping the metal-tipped spear as it hung buoylike in the swelling sea. Smooth and swift was its run, seeming more like an arrow cutting the air than a ship cutting the water. The narrow hull had been built purely for speed. Drizzt had seen pirates such as this; often similar ships had led Sea Sprite, also a schooner, but a three-master and much larger, on long pursuits. The drow had enjoyed those chases most of all during his time with Deudermont, sails full of wind, spray rushing past, his white hair flowing out behind him as he stood poised at the forward rail.
He was not enjoying this scenario, though. There were many pirates along the Sword Coast well capable of destroying Quester, larger and better armed and armored than the well-structured caravel, truly the hunting lions of the region. But this approaching ship was more a bird of prey, a swift and cunning hunter designed for smaller quarry, for fishing boats wandering too far from protected harbors or the luxury barges of wealthy merchants who let their warship escorts get a bit too far away from them. Or pirate schooners would work in conjunction, several on a target, a fleet hunting pack.
But no other sails were to be seen on any horizon.
From a different pouch, Drizzt took out his onyx figurine. "I will bring in Guenhwyvar soon," he explained to Regis and Bruenor. Captain Vaines came up again, a nervous expression stamped on his face-one that told the drow that, despite his many years at sea, Vaines had not seen much battle. "With a proper run the panther can leap fifty feet or more to gain the deck of our enemies' ship. Once there she will make more than a few call for a retreat."