Rising tide - Mel Odom [52]
"The little bastard nearly killed me. Look what he's done to my leg."
Jherek lay on his back and tried to breathe. He couldn't. It was like the crossbow bolt had nailed his chest closed. He lay still, staring up into the sky, at the stars he'd gotten so accustomed to while on watch in Butterfly's crow's nest. He couldn't even blink or move his eyes as he watched the woman approach.
"Your own fault," she told the big man without sympathy. "You moved on him from out of the shadows. He should have been dead before he even knew you were there."
"You saw how quick he was," Croess protested. "Fanged demons take me if I'm lying, but he's hardly more than a boy and he fights like a damned whirlwind."
"You knew he would be something different. We were told that." She stared down at Jherek with empty eyes and said, "A crossbow bolt did for him just fine." She glanced across Jherek and added, to someone, "You said there was gold?"
"Aye," a man said.
Jherek strained to hear better, but the numbness filling his body seemed to affect his ears as well. He was certain he knew the voice.
"Old Finaren, he's soft on his people. Always puts something aside for them. Knew he'd give it to this boy even with him being what he is."
The elf woman knelt and went through Jherek's clothing. Her practiced fingers found the leather pouch Finaren had given him. She tossed it, seeming to weigh its worth in that single motion. "So young," she said, standing. "Pity."
"We should take his head," Croess said. "Prove to that damned wizard that we did what we set out to do."
"No," the woman replied. "He'll take our word."
"His foot, then," the big man said. "We'll make it look like the ghost that's supposed to haunt this place was responsible for killing him."
"After you've gone and bled all over the place?" the woman taunted. She shook her head. "No, I'll not have him mutilated. The old woman who raised him will be allowed to bury all of him."
"Maybe that's not your choice," the big man grated. "It was me that got hurt. I'll do as I damn well please."
"Try, and he won't be the only one who dies here tonight," the woman promised.
Silence filled the court for a moment, then Jherek heard the big man limp away. His hearing dwindled, making it impossible for him to hear anything else that might have been said. His vision blurred, then finally turned dark. He felt stilled, buried in the icy core of his own shadow, wearing it like a shroud.
Through it all, even though the fear and anger burned through him, he wondered where the voice was. Why wasn't it commanding him again, telling him to live so that he could serve?
The darkness crept in and stole even his thoughts away.
VIII
30 Ches, the Year of the Gauntlet
Laaqueel paused at the top of the wooden steps leading up to Fishgut Court. The battle taking place out in the harbor was drawing all of Waterdeep's attention. More sailors and shopkeepers ran toward the harbor. Several of them brushed past Iakhovas and his wererat group, letting her know his spell still masked them. She studied the harbor, amazed that the attack had made it this far. Even when Iakhovas had made his plans, she'd had her doubts.
Another fiery salvo came from Waterdeep Castle's catapults, painting flaming lines through the dark sky for a moment, then splashing down in the water in a violent flash of sparks and hisses that overrode even the screaming fear and rage and disbelief coming from the surface dwellers. Fingers of oily fire splayed out over the waves stirred up by Iakhovas's wizard's storm. The waves crashed ten feet high now, slopping over the sides of many vessels at anchor and shoving them into each other.
A Waterdhavian Watch wizard rode a flying carpet out over the harbor toward a floundering raker besieged by sahuagin boarding from the water. The malenti watched the wizard start his gestures to unleash a spell. Her instinctive fear was of fire, knowing how quickly her people perished when fought with that element. She said a quick prayer to