Robert Salvatore: The Pirate King

“Sails port and aft!” the man in the crow’s nest shouted down. Robillard waved his hand, casting a spell to enhance his vision, his gaze locking on the pennant climbing the new ship’s rigging.

“Thrice Lucky,” he muttered, noting young Captain Maimun standing mid-rail. “Go home, boy.”

With a disgusted sigh, Robillard dismissed Maimun and his boat and turned his attention to the fight at hand.

He brought his pet air elemental back to him then used his ring to enact a spell of levitation. On his command, the elemental shoved him across the expanse toward Quelch’s Folly . He visually scoured the deck as he glided in, seeking her wizard. Deudermont and his crack crew weren’t to be outdone with swords, he well knew, and so the only potential damage would be wrought by magic.

He floated over the pirate’s rail, caught a rope to halt his drift, and calmly reached out to tap a nearby pirate, releasing a shock of electrical magic as he did. That man hopped weirdly once or twice, his long hair dancing crazily, then he fell over, twitching.

Robillard didn’t watch it. He glanced from battle to battle, and anywhere it seemed as though a pirate was getting the best of one of Deudermont’s men, he flicked his finger in that direction, sending forth a stream of magical missiles that laid the pirate low.

But where was her wizard? And where was Retch?

“Cowering in the hold, no doubt,” Robillard muttered to himself.

He released the levitation spell and began calmly striding across the deck. A pirate rushed at him from the side and slashed his saber hard against the wizard, but of course Robillard had well-prepared his defenses for any such crude attempts. The saber hit his skin and would have done no more against solid rock, a magical barrier blocking it fully.

Then the pirate went up into the air, caught by Robillard’s elemental. He flew out over the rail, flailing insanely, to splash into the cold ocean waters.

A favor for an old friend? Came a magical whisper in Robillard’s ear, and in a voice he surely recognized.

“Arabeth Raurym?” he mouthed in disbelief, and in sadness, for what might that promising young lass be doing at sea with the likes of Argus Retch?

Robillard sighed again, dropped another pair of pirates with a missile volley, loosed his air elemental on yet another group, and moved to the hatch. He glanced around then “removed” the hatch with a mighty gust of wind. Using his ring again to buoy him, for he didn’t want to bother with a ladder, the wizard floated down belowdecks.

What little fight remained in Argus Retch’s crew dissipated at the approach of the second ship, for Thrice Lucky had declared her allegiance with Deudermont. With expert handling, Maimun’s crew brought their vessel up alongside Quelch’s Folly, opposite Sea Sprite , and quickly set their boarding planks.

Maimun led the way, but he didn’t get two steps from his own deck before Deudermont himself appeared at the other end of the plank, staring at him with what seemed a mixture of curiosity and disdain.

“Sail past,” Sea Sprite ’s captain said.

“We fly Luskan’s banner,” Maimun replied.

Deudermont didn’t blink.

“Have we come to this, then, my captain?” Maimun asked.

“The choice was yours.”

“‘The choice,’” Maimun echoed. “Was it to be made only with your approval?” He kept approaching as he spoke, and dared hop down to the deck beside Deudermont. He looked back at his hesitant crew, and waved them forward.

“Come now, my old captain,” Maimun said, “there is no reason we cannot share an ocean so large, a coast so long.”

“And yet, in such a large ocean, you somehow find your way to my side.”

“For old times’ sake,” Maimun said with a disarming chuckle, and despite himself, Deudermont couldn’t suppress his smile.

“Have you killed the wretched Retch?” Maimun asked.

“We will have him soon enough.”

“You and I, perhaps, if we’re clever,” Maimun offered, and when Deudermont looked at him curiously, he added a knowing wink.

Maimun motioned Deudermont to follow and led him toward the captain’s quarters, though the door had already been ripped open and the anteroom appeared empty.

“Retch is rumored to always have a means of escape,” Maimun explained as they crossed the threshold into the private room, exactly as Arabeth had instructed Maimun to do.

“All pirates do,” Deudermont replied. “Where is yours?”

Maimun stopped and regarded Deudermont out of the corner of his eye for a few moments, but otherwise let the jab pass.

“Or are you implying that you have an idea where Retch’s escape might be found?” Deudermont asked when his joke flattened.

Maimun led the captain through a secret door and into Retch’s private quarters. The room was gaudily adorned with booty from a variety of places and with a variety of designs, rarely complimentary. Glass mixed with metal-work, fancy-edge and block, and a rainbow of colors left onlookers more dizzy than impressed. Of course, anyone who knew Captain Argus Retch, with his red-and-white striped shirt, wide green sash, and bright blue pants, would have thought the room perfectly within the wide parameters of the man’s curious sensibilities.

The moment of quiet distraction also brought a revelation to the two—one that Maimun had expected. A conversation from below drifted through a small grate in the corner of the room, and the sound of a cultured woman’s voice fully captured Deudermont’s attention.

“I care nothing for the likes of Argus Retch,” the woman said. “He is an ugly and ill-tempered dog, who should be put down.”

“Yet you are here,” a man’s voice—Robillard’s voice—answered.

“Because I fear Arklem Greeth more than I fear Sea Sprite, or any of the other pretend pirate hunters sailing the Sword Coast.”

“Pretend? Is this not a pirate? Is it not caught?”

“You know Sea Sprite is a show,” the woman argued. “You are a facade offered by the high captains so the peasants believe they’re being protected.”

“So the high captains approve of piracy?” asked an obviously doubting Robillard.

The woman laughed. “The Arcane Brotherhood operates the pirate trade, to great profit. Whether the high captains approve or disapprove is not important, because they don’t dare oppose Arklem Greeth. Feign not your ignorance of this, Brother Robillard. You served at the Hosttower for years.”

“It was a different time.”

“Indeed,” the woman agreed. “But now is as now is, and now is the time of Arklem Greeth.”

“You fear him?”

“I’m terrified of him, and horrified of what he is,” the woman answered without the slightest hesitation. “And I pray that someone will rise up and rid the Hosttower of him and his many minions. But I’m not that person. I take pride in my prowess as an overwizard and in my heritage as daughter of the marchion of Mirabar.”

“Arabeth Raurym,” Deudermont mouthed in recognition.

“But I wouldn’t involve my father in this, for he is already entangled with the brotherhood’s designs on the Silver Marches. Luskan would be well-served by being rid of Arklem Greeth—even Prisoner’s Carnival might then be brought back under lawful and orderly control. But he will outlive my children’s children’s children—or out-exist them, I mean, since he long ago stopped drawing breath.”

“Lich,” Robillard said quietly. “It’s true, then.”

“I am gone,” Arabeth answered. “Do you intend to stop me?”

“I would be well within my province to arrest you here and now.”

“But will you?”