Dragon's Bluff (Crossroads) by Mary H. Herbert

Author:Mary H. Herbert [Herbert, Mary H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786964895
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2013-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

If Flotsam bore a resemblance to a heap of debris washed ashore after a storm, Dead Pirate’s Cove looked like a ship’s graveyard. The cove itself was a difficult place to find, for its narrow entrance was protected on the east by a high ridge of barren hills and on the west by a saltmarsh that clogged the mouth of a narrow sluggish river. In more prosperous years, pirates had used the river and its marshy delta as a hide-out and had left remnants of their passing: a few old shacks on the dunes north of the marsh, an abandoned longboat, the burned ruins of a galley, its blackened ribs still poking though the sand. It wasn’t until Captain Grimborne Reever arrived, however, that the cove earned its accepted name.

Legend told of Captain Reever’s magnificent treasure and how he hid it in chests ensorceled with spells and buried it somewhere in the cove. It was no sooner buried than he poisoned his entire crew and left their bodies as guardians for his fabulous prize. Unfortunately for Captain Reever, the dead pirates resented their captain’s greed and bloody-minded selfishness, and their spirits harried him until, in a fit of madness, he drove his ship aground on the mud flats and ran screaming onto his sword. After that people still came to Dead Pirate’s Cove to hide or escape, but more came to hunt for the treasure. A few old pirates, seeing the way the wind was blowing after the arrival of Malystryx, took their ships to the cove, hauled them ashore near Captain Reever’s abandoned craft, and formed their own small settlement. It was rough, it was crude, but it was theirs. Others joined them, and in time the settlement became a village of sorts with its own collection of taverns, gaming houses, shops, and houses built out of pieces of old ships, mud and reed, or whatever was handy. If anyone ever found the captain’s treasure, they never confessed, for their lives would not be worth a bucket of warm spit. The red dragon had spies everywhere and would know of the find before the first piece of steel or the first gem reached the light of day. Of course, that knowledge did not stop people from hoping—or looking on moonlit nights.

A few small boats and an old caravel were anchored in the cove when Ulin and Notwen arrived late that night. They maneuvered the Second Thoughts past the sandbars and the anchored craft and took her to the sole pier that extended out from the marshy shore into the water from a boardwalk worn gray by time and salt spray.

The strange noises emanating from the steam engine drew a small crowd from the boardwalk and the shacks that lined the cove’s so-called waterfront. The spectators held torches and lanterns and made vociferous comments on the noise, the steam, the smoke, the reliability, and the appearance of the little craft.

Notwen blithely ignored them. While Ulin jumped to the dock and tied the boat fast, the gnome shut down the boiler, released the steam, and banked the fire.

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