The Mercenaries - Ed Greenwood [1]
The copper-topped bar was a crowded forest of tankards and strange bottles from distant, exotic ports, their vintners and brewers either unknown or legendary. More than a few beverages had been so doctored with dyes and sugar-powders by gentle hands behind the bar that their makers wouldn't have recognized them. It didn't matter; the guests were thirsty, and anything that could be opened and poured down a throat would serve. Tankards were being taken out to the tables in crates to avoid spillage in the crowd of laughing, shouting men-and the burly men carrying them were already looking wet and weary.
Ladies who wore only thin leather strips strung with tiny chiming bells swung platters of food from table to table with practiced ease, slapping at some sailors and stopping to dance or bestow kisses when coins were stuffed into their leg-bags. One of them didn't have to slap; she wore only the reeking, draped seaweed of a priestess of Umberlee, goddess of the sea-and men carefully left her alone.
She slipped through the tumult like a dark shadow, as pirates laughed and told wild stories and slapped each other and the tables with mirth-and in one dark corner by the fire a fat little man sat alone at a table. In the reflective surface of a brightly polished tankard, he watched it all. The heat thrown off by the hearth kept most of the weaving pirates from lingering in his corner. From time to time his dark, glistening eyes went to a door nearby, but mostly he looked around the room, keeping his head lowered so his jet black hair hooded his searching gaze, and listened.
The tall tankard sat untasted before him. From time to time, when no one seemed to be looking, he emptied it into a corner. He smilingly held it out- with a handful of silver bits-to be filled anew each time the tall, tanned wine-wench sauntered by. They exchanged wordless smiles at her every visit. She'd taken her measure of his milk-white skin, dark eyes, and a certain air of calm danger that hovered about him. A pity he's so fat, she thought. Otherwise, he just might be worth an evening…
She glanced again at his fine-fingered, almost delicate hands, where they rested on knee and tabletop, sighed inwardly, and went on down the room, avoiding the hairy, groping hands-and hooks-of more boisterous patrons.
As the little man watched her go, the faintest of smiles touched his hps. If this had been another night, he might have been interested… but just now he was hunting men.
The right men, to be precise; or women, if he could find them strong enough. He needed a few folk to aid him in a mission, folk good at skulking and swordplay. Pirates. He only needed a few-an expendable few- but they had to be the right few.
The sailors at a nearby table had been drinking steadily since dusk, and were beginning-one by one-to slip down senseless in their chairs. Soon the lammers would spot them and sling them out the door beside him, and the table would have new occupants.
Tankards thumped down on another table, hard by, and the watcher raised his own empty jack to his mouth to cover the slight turn of his head that would afford him the best listening he could get. Somewhere, someone dropped a dish with a battlelike clatter-and somewhere nearer, a very drunken pirate lifted his voice in tuneless song. Through it all the fat man listened without seeming to do so.
"A few more runs of lumber and cart-wheels down to Doegan, and they won't need to hire our holds any more! It's foolishness, I tell you! Next, the only honest work we'll be able to find'll be building roads-and once there're no honest coasters left, they'll be free to hunt down all afloat as pirates!"
"Nay, there'll be war before then. That's what wagons mean-war, not cutting us out o' trade. You think Doegan, say, and Konigheim trust each other enough to build good roads betwixt n' between, hey? Think again,