Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [29]
general had needed a fleet. Since then, the navigator had returned to land, though he had been willing enough to accept the fee offered by the princes to induce him to join this expedition.
“A fresh wind moves us. We make good time,” remarked Rodolfo, coming to join Don Vaez at the rail. The commander nodded disinterestedly, content to leave such details to his navigator. With a thin grimace, Rodolfo stalked away, but Don Vaez was still lost in his own thoughts.
He chuckled wryly as he thought of his earliest training, at the Academy of Stealth in Calimshan. What a terrible thief he had made! Why sneak through the night to snatch something surreptitiously, he had wondered, when he could walk up to the owner, bash him over the head with his sword, and take it in broad daylight?
The masters of the academy had reached the same conclusion, and Don Vaez and Calimshan had parted ways – for the most part amicably, since the masters had not taken a thorough inventory until their ex-student was a good distance away Aided by the disguises of a guileless servant girl, he had escaped from the city and journeyed north along the coast. The girl, he assumed, had paid for her complicity with her life, though he had never bothered to find out for sure.
Following these experiences, Don Vaez had served in one of the mercenary companies aiding Amn in its two-decade war against the pirates of the Sword Coast. After the unfortunate and mysterious demise of the company captain-no one had ever been able to identify the archer that had slain him from behind while he led his troops into battle-Don Vaez had risen to command the company. In this capacity, he had first attracted the attention of the merchant princes.
And in the same capacity, he had been forced to compete with the soldiering of Captain-General Cordell and his Golden Legion. When Cordell had won the ultimate victory against the scimitar-waving horde of the pirate lord, Akbet Khrul, Don Vaez’s rival had been assured the place of highest honor before the Council of Amn.
For the suddenly unemployed Don Vaez, there had been a
lady-a very wealthy, albeit very married, lady Vet somehow her favor had carried him to the council again, now that Cordell had apparently disappeared and, the don hoped, betrayed his employers. Don Vaez had even wondered if the lady might be one of the merchant princes herself, though of course that fact would remain secret.
Nevertheless, her influence must have been significant, for he had been selected to command this glorious endeavor.
The merchant princes of Amn had given him a great force and a strong charter. Somewhere out there, he felt, his old rival Cordell was still alive. The gods would not, could not be cruel enough to deprive Don Vaez of the confrontation he so rightly deserved.
“You know that he lives out there, do you not?” The question came from Pryat Devane. The cleric, wearing a close-fitting cloth cap and a woolen cape, joined him at the rail of the ship.
“Cordell?” Don Vaez turned to the cleric, surprised at the man’s accurate guess. He smiled thinly. “Yes, I believe that we will… encounter him.”
“Good!” The pryat spoke sharply. “His reckless behavior has no doubt cost my mentor his life!”
“Bishou Domincus? You feel that he has been slain?”
“I’m certain of it,” announced the cleric. “But he will be avenged!”
“Indeed,” agreed the captain, turning back to the sea. It seemed that he had an ally, a spiritual brother, in this dour priest of Helm. And, remembering the flying carpet the princes had told him about, he felt that Pryat Devane could prove to be a very useful ally indeed.
In his mind, Don Vaez pictured the encounter with the defeated Cordell. The man would beg for mercy, and Don Vaez would make him wriggle and plead for his life. Of course, all the while he knew he would grant that life, for his moment of true triumph would not arrive until he returned with Cordell to Amn and marched the traitorous mercenary through the streets of Murann in chains.
Or in a cage, perhaps.