The Sea Devil's Eye - Mel Odom [15]
Glawinn yelled to the horses and pulled them hard to the left as they bounded out onto the street at the end of the alley. The new street plunged down and twisted crazily on its way to the harbor.
The crowd from the tavern made the next turn much tighter than the wagon. They were gaining. Other men walking along the new street joined in the chase. Jherek stared at the wolfs pack in dismay. Anything like a quiet escape was totally out of the question now. Flame suddenly flared at his side. He turned and watched Azla fit an arrow to the short bow she'd carried into town.
The pirate captain pulled the string back to her cheek and fired from a kneeling position. The arrow sped true, shedding sparks from the cloth tied just behind the barbed head. The missile found a home in a man's chest. Blue and yellow flames twisted up and caught his beard on fire, wreathing his face in flames. He fell back among his companions.
Azla picked up another arrow that held a scrap of cloth tied to it and drenched it in the keg of spirits she'd broken open.
"Talif," she called calmly, her black eyes searching the street for targets.
The thief held a green flame between his cupped palms. The strange fire emanated from a coin. Azla lit her second arrow from the enchanted coin and fired it into the thatched roof of a nearby warehouse. The flame spread quickly across the wooden shingles.
A cry of alarm sounded from the pirates. More than half of them peeled off and ran for the building. As tightly packed as Immurk's Hold was, and being constructed of wood, Jherek knew there was a real danger of the town burning down if a fire was left untended. He balanced on his knees, his fist curled tight around the cutlass hilt, rocking as the bumpy ride continued.
Azla shot two more fire arrows into buildings they passed, creating even more of a diversion. By then the horses were hitting their pace and the wheels rattled across the uneven cobblestones.
* * * * *
Laaqueel felt a moment of heated resistance, then she slipped through the wooden timber of the bulkhead behind
Iakhovas. In the next instant, harsh sunlight and the unsteady deck of a ship lunging at sea greeted her. Iakhovas had set up gates in the sahuagin castle as well that let him travel immediately to different areas along the Sword Coast.
"Lord Iakhovas!" a loud voice boomed. "Welcome aboard!"
Turning, the malenti priestess spied the tall, big-bellied form of Vurgrom the Mighty. The pirate captain came down the stern castle stairs like a flesh and blood avalanche.
Vurgrom was a mountain of a man, no taller than Iakhovas but easily twice as broad. He had flaming red hair on the sides of his head but none on top, and long chin whiskers that thrust out defiantly. He wore scarred leather breeches and a sleeveless leather vest.
"You called me," Iakhovas stated.
The big pirate captain grinned, swaying slightly as the ship thundered across the ocean waves, pushed by a strong wind.
"Aye," Vurgrom said, "and it's because I've got some news you might be interested in."
The crew tried to get closer to him, but he waved them all away.
"What is your location?" Iakhovas asked.
Vurgrom shrugged and said, "A few days from the Whamite Isles."
"You will be there." Iakhovas's tone left no margin for misunderstanding.
The big man flushed a little. "Aye," he said, "and I won't let you down, Lord Iakhovas, but I have something else to show you-something you need to know about."
Vurgrom dug in a pouch belted at his prodigious waist and produced an oval pearl encased in a golden disk. Laaqueel watched sudden interest dawn on Iakhovas's face. He studied the disk in the pirate captain's fat palm.
"I hired a diviner to look at it," Vurgrom said. "She told me it would lead me to a weapon."
Iakhovas studied the disk. "So it will."
"I've been trying to get in touch with you," Vurgrom said. "The device you gave me wasn't working."
"It worked when it was supposed to," Iakhovas said sharply.
Vurgrom's face blanched. "Of course, Lord Iakhovas," he said. "I only meant that I would have spoken with you earlier