Dirty Work by Dan McGirt

Author:Dan McGirt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: heroic fantasy, dan mcgirt, humor, humorous fantasy, sequel, satire, fantasy series, fantasy, jason cosmo, hero, wizards, parody, magic, comedy, sword and sorcery, fantasy adventure
Publisher: Dan McGirt

It was six more days and sixty more tales of Malachi Skipjammer to Nerak. We’d thus far had mild weather for the season, but winter officially began in two days and we couldn’t expect our luck to hold.

Nerak was a small town at the south end of the Brythalian Corridor, a narrow strip of hilly territory connecting landlocked Brythalia. over two hundred miles inland, with the Indigo Sea. King Rubric, the Brythalian monarch, dreamed of challenging the great maritime powers for control of the sea-lanes. His scheme involved diverting the mighty River Longwash down the Corridor and thus stealing the river trade from Caratha by stealing the river. The digging was already under way, but Rubric’s engineers were terminally incompetent and had thus far succeeded in little more than burying hundreds of workers in collapsing trenches and flooding large tracts of prime farmland.

Phase two of Rubric’s grand scheme was the construction of a gigantic war fleet. Brythalia was blessed with ancient forests and many lakes. Lured by generous bribes, master Carathan shipbuilders had gone to Brythalia and used the wealth of timber to build a hundred galleys on the forest lakes. And there the Brythalian navy remained, undisputed ruler of those tiny, isolated bodies of water.

Someday Rubric’s armada might sail down his grand canal to wrest the oceans from their masters of the past thousand years, but meanwhile Nerak was a place of outcasts. The big shipping companies like Corundum Trading and the House of Shane shunned the port, leaving it to the pirates, smugglers, and slavers who gladly shared their booty with the royal governor in return for a safe base of operations.

The place had a sordid look fully in keeping with its clientele. A haze of oily smoke from a score of chimneys hung over the town, which sprawled over the slopes of three clustered hills like the emaciated body of a murder victim. The wooden buildings, mostly taverns and brothels, leaned this way and that like unsteady drunks. The governor’s keep, balanced unsteadily on the least eroded of the hills, looked as though the pressure of the afternoon sunlight might bring it down. The wharves were in poor repair, but ten ships had berthed there anyway. A space was open at the last pier.

Perched on the prow, Skipjammer spread his arms wide.

“Nerak, sir! As vile a den of iniquity as you will find! Nerak! A place of low cunning and black treachery, sudden violence and cruel laughter, rampant greed and gluttonous appetites! Nerak, sir!” He hopped down. “I know the place well.”

“Just get us to shore,” said Solana weakly. “Please. I long to stand on solid ground.”

Patting Solana’s arm consolingly, Skipjammer appraised the moored ships. “I must say this is an unusual conglomeration of corsairs for this time of year, sir! I’d expect them to be working the sunny waters of the south, but we have a veritable roll call of infamy here! The Blackguard and Deception of Lawless Lawler. The Jaundice and the Scurvy. That’s the Malad brothers, Jacques and Louis.

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