Free Under Fallen Stars by Mel Odom Page B

the docks, Jherek watched the foggy cloud breaking up. The damage to the docks was already extensive, and the fires weren’t being put out very quickly. The boy struggled in his grasp, pulling at his legs.
    “Are you burned?” Jherek asked.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “If I let you go, can you swim?”
    “Like a duck,” the lamp boy promised.
    Jherek let him go, watching for a moment as the boy kicked away and swam in a crude dog paddle that seemed serviceable enough.
    The boy turned around, his face going pale and even more frightened. “Behind you!”
    Jherek tried to turn, feeling the malignant darkness behind him as well as the water rippling against his back. Before he could do more than start the motion, he felt the scaly sahuagin arm snake around his neck and drag him under the water.
    Even as he went down, Jherek heard a familiar roar that triggered a wash of fear that filled him. The loud scream of anger and challenge was artificial, but it sounded enough like a bunyip that there could be no mistake. The hoarse roar told him one of the black-sailed ships carried his father, Bloody Falkane, one of the most feared and vicious of the cold-blooded pirates of the Nelanther Isles.
    Fear ran through the young sailor, not of the sahuagin who held him, but of the man who’d sired him. He bore his father’s mark on his arm, indelibly put there with magic and ink, and carried the cursed fate that resulted from his father’s sins.
    The bunyip scream sounded again as the thickly muscled arm tightened around Jherek’s neck and pulled him farther down.
     

     
    Laaqueel tried in vain to shut out the keening roar of the bunyip. The malenti priestess stood in the stern of Bent Tankard, the cog the sahuagin had taken only two days ago under their new king’s orders.
    Wind whipped through the rigging and the sailcloth fluttered as the captain called out orders to his trimming crew while still others prepared to board the watch ships that had come to intercept them.
    A few of the sahuagin weren’t completely unversed in handling surface ships. They’d taken some and used them as decoys to attack other ships in the past.
    The bunyip roar blared again.
    Glancing across the distance separating them from the lead ship, Laaqueel made out Bloody Falkane’s tall frame striding across the deck. The pirate captain was a striking man, tall and slender but packed with wiry muscle. Even now his oiled black hair was neatly combed back. He wore a mustache and goatee. Moonlight glinted from the silver hoop earrings he wore in both ears, as well as the other bits of jewelry. He wore a silk shirt of darkest blue and black breeches tucked into rolled boots that matched his shirt.
    Laaqueel knew the bunyip roar came from a device Falkane had ordered made and carried on his own ship. The bunyip was a freshwater creature that was at first glance very sharklike in appearance, but the shaggy black hair that covered its body and the long, flowing mane set it apart.
    The malenti didn’t know why the pirate had chosen the bunyip as his standard, except for the keening roar that instilled fear into most people who heard it.
    She watched the fires scattered around the harbor spread only slightly. Baldur’s Gate was constructed mostly of stone and usually stayed damp because of the climate. This city wouldn’t burn as Waterdeep had, but it had less chance of standing.
    The cog slid into the harbor, following Bloody Falkane’s craft. Six other ships, all loaded with pirates from the Nelanther Isles, followed them. The deck didn’t pitch much, but the movement was still foreign to her after spending nearly all her life working with the sea’s currents instead of against them.
    Sudden lightning flashed from the harbor, racing in a horizontal line until it touched the mainmast of Falkane’s cog. Wood splintered with a thunderous crack and embers blew up in a flurry from the wood. Sheared, the mainmast started to topple toward the deck, then got