The Mercenaries by Ed Greenwood

Author:Ed Greenwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, General, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780786908660
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 1998-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Rising Faceless From the Deeps

The Sharkers exchanged startled glances as the strange glow came again, flickering violently.

Rings peered at the fast-approaching black ship, and so he was the last on board the Morning Bird to see it, as the very air around them began to glow, and swirl, and turn green.

One of the Tharkarans cried out in fear. The pirates heard the smack of an open hand crashing into flesh, followed by Kurthe's snarl of exasperation, and the thumps of the sailor's body slumping to the deck. In the silence that followed, the air slowly brightened, until the night around them was gone, and their world had become an unbroken dome of swirling, glowing mists.

"Make ready," Anvil said tensely. "A little mist isn't going to stop that foe from ramming us-and at the speed it was making, that'll come soon."

"Why doesn't Belmer have those dolts back there turn us again?" Belgin asked angrily. "We're practically holding our side out to be hit!" He clenched his fists in exasperation, and started to pace. "Why, if he was here right now, I'd tell him soon enough-"

A hatch cover under his boots suddenly rose, spilling the sharper abruptly into the rail, and Belmer's head came into view. He looked up at the mists and nodded, as if satisfied.

Belgin seemed to have changed his mind about telling their employer anything, so it was Rings who asked, "Hadn't we better change course or do something to keep them from ramming?"

"I've done what was necessary," Belmer replied, just a trifle sharply.

"How did you bring on the mists?" Sharessa asked. "You hadn't time to cast any spell!"

Belmer shrugged. "I had time to let loose a magic I paid someone else dearly for," he told her. "I'd hoped not to have to use it quite so soon, but…"

"We're somewhere slightly different from where we were before you called up the mists," Sharessa said slowly, "aren't we?"

Belmer nodded slowly.

"So," Rings asked breezily, "does any danger confront us in this-" he waved his arms at the roiling fog all around "-beside the usual mischance of running into things?"

"Well," Belmer said in dry tones, "there's always that." He pointed into the greenish mists at something large and dark.

Another ship was drifting out of the mists to loom up over the far rail, bowsprit outstretched.

All over the Morning Bird folk cried out. It was going to ram them, it was an ancient carrack glistening with sea slime, it was a-

"Ghost ship!" Jander Turbalt bellowed, and his crew sent up a wail. "Ghost ship!"

The Sharkers stared at the vessel as it ran almost gently up against the Morning Bird and lodged its bows in their midships rigging.

A smell wafted across the decks: a channel reek of rot and old creeping mold and dead things. The sails of the ghost ship were sagging ropes of black, glistening brine slime, and its decks were furry with seabed plants and convulsing, dying crabs, strangling on air where they'd been breathing water before. Among them strode the crew: slow, lurching sailors who wore only rotten rags.

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