The Pirate King: Dungeons & Dragons

1

Fair Winds and Following Seas

Sails billowing, timbers creaking, water spraying high from her prow, Thrice Lucky leaped across the swells with the grace of a dancer. All the multitude of sounds blended together in a musical chorus, both invigorating and inspiring, and it occurred to young Captain Maimun that if he had hired a band of musicians to rouse his crew, their work would add little to the natural music all around them.

The chase was on, and every man and woman aboard felt it, and heard it.

Maimun stood forward and starboard, holding fast to a guide rope, his brown hair waving in the wind, his black shirt half unbuttoned and flapping refreshingly and noisily, bouncing out enough to show a tar-­black scar across the left side of his chest.

“They are close,” came a woman’s voice from behind him, and Maimun half turned to regard Overwizard Arabeth Raurym, Mistress of the South Tower.

“Your magic tells you so?”

“Can’t you feel it?” the woman answered and gave a coy toss of her head so that her waist-length red hair caught the wind and flipped back behind her. Her blouse was as open as Maimun’s shirt, and the young man couldn’t help but look admiringly at the alluring creature.

He thought of the previous night, and the night before that, and before that as well—­of the whole enjoyable journey. Arabeth had promised him a wonderful and exciting sail in addition to the rather large sum she’d offered for her passage, and Maimun couldn’t honestly say that she’d disappointed him. She was around his age, just past thirty, intelligent, attractive, sometimes brazen, sometimes coy, and just enough of each to keep Maimun and every other man around her off balance and keenly interested in pursuing her. Arabeth knew her power well, and Maimun knew that she knew it, but still, he couldn’t shake himself free of her.

Arabeth stepped up beside him and playfully brushed her fingers through his thick hair. He glanced around quickly, hoping none of the crew had seen, for the action only accentuated that he was quite young to be captaining a ship, and that he looked even younger. His build was slight, wiry yet strong, his features boyish and his eyes a delicate light blue. While his hands were calloused, like those of any honest seaman, his skin had not yet taken on the weathered, leathery look of a man too much under the sparkling sun.

Arabeth dared to run her hand under the open fold of his shirt, her fingers dancing across his smooth skin to the rougher place where skin and tar had melded together, and it occurred to Maimun that he typically kept his shirt open just a bit more for exactly the reason of revealing a hint of that scar, that badge of honor, that reminder to all around that he had spent most of his life with a blade in his hand.

“You are a paradox,” Arabeth remarked, and Maimun merely smiled. “Gentle and strong, soft and rough, kind and merciless, an artist and a warrior. With your lute in hand, you sing with the voice of the sirens, and with your sword in hand, you fight with the tenacity of a drow weapons master.”

“You find this off-­putting?”

Arabeth laughed. “I would drag you to your cabin right now,” she replied, “but they are close.”

As if on cue—­and Maimun was certain Arabeth had used some magic to confirm her prediction before she’d offered it—­a crewman from the crow’s nest shouted down, “Sails! Sails on the horizon!”

“Two ships,” Arabeth said to Maimun.

“Two ships!” the man in the nest called down.

“Sea Sprite and Quelch’s Folly,” said Arabeth. “As I told you when we left Luskan.”

Maimun could only chuckle helplessly at the manipulative wizard. He reminded himself of the pleasures of the journey, and of the hefty bag of gold awaiting its completion.

He thought, too, in terms bitter and sweet, of the Sea Sprite and Deu­der­mont, his old ship, his old captain.

“Aye, Captain, that’s Argus Retch or I’m the son of a barbarian king and an orc queen,” Waillan Micanty said. He winced as he finished, reminding himself of the cultured man he served. He scanned Deu­der­mont head to toe, from his neatly trimmed beard and hair to his tall and spotless black boots. The captain showed more gray in his hair, but still not much for a man of more than fifty years, and that only made him appear more regal and impressive.

“A bottle of the finest wine for Dhomas Sheeringvale, then,” Deu­der­mont said in a light tone that put Micanty back at ease. “Against all of my doubts, the information you garnered from him was correct and we’ve finally got that filthy pirate before us.” He clapped Micanty on the back and glanced back over his shoulder and up to the Sea Sprite’s wizard, who sat on the edge of the poop deck, his skinny legs dangling under his heavy robes. “And soon in range of our catapult,” Deu­der­mont added loudly, catching the attention of the mage, Rob­il­lard, “if our resident wizard there can get the sails straining.”

“Cheat to win,” Rob­il­lard replied, and with a dramatic flourish he waggled his fingers, the ring that allowed him control over a fickle air elemental sending forth another mighty gust of wind that made the Sea Sprite’s timbers creak.

“I grow weary of the chase,” Deu­der­mont retorted, his way of saying that he was eager to finally confront the beastly pirate he pursued.

“Less so than I,” the wizard replied.

Deu­der­mont didn’t argue that point, and he knew that the benefit of Rob­il­lard’s magic filling the sails was mitigated by the strong following winds. In calmer seas, the Sea Sprite could still rush along, propelled by the wizard and his ring, while their quarry would typically flee at a crawl. The captain clapped Micanty on the shoulder and led him to the side, in view of the Sea Sprite’s new and greatly improved catapult. Heavily banded in metal strapping, the dwarven weapon could heave a larger payload. The throwing arm and basket strained under the weight of many lengths of chain, laid out for maximum extension by gunners rich in experience.

“How long?” Deu­der­mont asked the sighting officer, who stood beside the catapult, spyglass in hand.

“We could hit her now with a ball of pitch, mighten be, but getting the chains up high enough to shred her sails . . . That’ll take another fifty yards closing.”

“One yard for every gust,” Deu­der­mont said with a sigh of feigned resignation. “We need a stronger wizard.”

“You’d be looking for Elminster himself, then,” Rob­il­lard shot back. “And he’d probably burn your sails in some demented attempt at a colorful flourish. But please, hire him on. I would enjoy a holiday, and would enjoy more the sight of you swimming back to Luskan.”

This time Deu­der­mont’s sigh was real.

So was Rob­il­lard’s grin.

The Sea Sprite’s timbers creaked again, forward-­leaning masts driving the prow hard against the dark water.

Soon after, everyone on the deck, even the seemingly dispassionate wizard, waited with breath held for the barked command, “Tack starboard!”

The Sea Sprite bent over in a water-­swirling hard turn, bending her masts out of the way for the aft catapult to let fly. And let fly she did, the dwarven siege engine screeching and creaking, hurling several hundred pounds of wrapped metal through the air. The chains burst open to near full length as they soared, and whipped in above the deck of Quelch’s Folly, slashing her sails.

As the wounded pirate ship slowed, the Sea Sprite tacked hard back to port. A flurry of activity on the pirate’s deck showed her archers preparing for the fight, and the Sea Sprite’s crack crew responded in kind, aligning themselves along the port rail, composite bows in hand.

But it was Rob­il­lard who, by design, struck first. In addition to constructing the necessary spells to defend against magical attacks, the wizard used an enchanted censer and brought forth a denizen from the Elemental Plane of Air. It appeared like a waterspout, but with hints of a human form, a roiling of air powerful enough to suck up and hold water within it to better define its dimensions. Loyal and obedient because of the ring Rob­il­lard wore, the cloudlike pet all but invisibly floated over the rail of the Sea Sprite and glided toward Quelch’s Folly.

Captain Deu­der­mont lifted his hand high and looked to Rob­il­lard for guidance. “Alongside her fast and straight,” he instructed the helmsman.

“Not to rake?” Waillan Micanty asked, echoing perfectly the sentiments of the helmsman, for normally the Sea Sprite would cripple her opponent and come in broadside to the pirate’s taffrail, giving the Sea Sprite’s archers greater latitude and mobility.

Rob­il­lard had convinced Deu­der­mont of a new plan for the ruffians of Quelch’s Folly, a plan more straightforward and more devastating to a crew deserving of no quarter.