PRESSURE
The small bit of water they had put in the pot bubbled and steamed away, its aroma eliciting many licks of anticipation. The dark meat, twenty pounds of basted perfection, glistened from the surface burns of fast cooking, for not a one of the band of highwaymen was willing to wait the hours to properly prepare the unexpected feast.
The moment the cook announced it was done, the group began tearing at it eagerly, ripping off large chunks and shoving them into hungry mouths so that their cheeks bulged like rodents storing food for the winter. Every now and then one or another paused just long enough to lift a toast to Ship Rethnor, who had supplied them so well. And all that the generous son of the recently-deceased high captain had asked for in return was that the band waylay a caravan, and with all proceeds of the theft going to the highwaymen.
"They give us food for taking food," one rogue observed with a chuckle.
"And give us help in taking it," another agreed, indicating a small keg of particularly effective poison.
So they cheered and they ate, and they laughed and cheered some more for the son of Ship Rethnor.
The next morning, they watched from a series of low forested hills as the expected caravan, more than two dozen wagons, wound its way up the road from the south. Many guards accompanied the train - proud Waterdhavian soldiers - and even several wizards.
"Remember that we've a whole tenday," Sotinthal Magree, the leader of the Luskar band, told his fellows. "Sting and run, sting and run - wear them down day after day."
The others nodded as one. They didn't have to kill all of the guards. They didn't have to stop all of the wagons. If less than half of the wagons and less than half of the supplies got through to Luskan, Ship Rethnor would be satisfied and the highwaymen would share in the bounty.
That morning, a volley of crossbow quarrels flew out at the teams of the last two wagons in line, horses and guards alike. From a safe distance and with light crossbows, such an attack would hardly have bothered the seasoned travelers, but even the slightest scratch from a poisoned quarrel brought down even the largest of the draft horses.
The group of guards that charged out at the attackers similarly found their numbers halved with a second, more concentrated volley. Minor wounds proved devastating. Strong men crumbled to the ground in a deep and uncompromising sleep.
The crossbowmen melted into the woods before any close engagement could begin and from the other side of the road, a small group of grenadiers found their openings and charged the weakest spans of the caravan, hurling their fiery missiles of volatile oil and running off in fast retreat.
When some guards gave chase they found themselves caught in a series of spring traps, swinging logs and deviously buried spikes, all tipped, once again, with that devious poison.
By the end of the encounter, two wagons and their contents were fully engulfed in flames and two others damaged so badly that the Waterdhavians had to strip one to salvage the other. The caravan had lost several horses to flames or to injuries caused when the sleeping poison had sent them falling to the ground. A trio of guards had been murdered in the woods.
"They've no plan for the likes of us," Sotinthal told his men that night as they shadowed the caravan. "Like the dwarf told us they wouldn't. They're thinking that all the folk north of Waterdeep would welcome their passing and the food and grain they're bringing. A straight-on attack by monsters? Aye. A hungry band o' highwaymen? Aye. But not the likes of us - well fed and not needing their goods, well rewarded and not needing to fight them straight up."
He ended with a laugh that proved infectious around the campfire, and he wondered what tricks he and his fellows might use on the caravan the following day.
The next night, Sotinthal congratulated himself again, for the heavy boulder his men had rolled down the hill had taken out another wagon, destroying two of its wheels and spilling sacks of grain across the ground.
Their biggest cheer of all came three nights later, when a well-placed fiery arrow had lit up the oil-soaked understructure of a small bridge across a fast-moving stream, taking two wagons in the ensuing blaze and leaving five stranded on one side of the water, the men of the dozen-and-four on the other side staring helplessly.
Over the next two days, Sotinthal's men picked away at the Waterdhavians as they tried to find a ford or rebuild some measure of a bridge that could get the rest of their wagons across the stream.
The leader of the highwaymen knew the battered Waterdhavians were approaching their breaking point, and he was not surprised, though surely elated, when they simply ferried the supplies back over the stream to the south, overloaded the remaining wagons, and set off to the south, back to Waterdeep.
Kensidan would pay him well indeed.
"He is in her mind," the voice in the shadows said to Arklem Greeth. "Calming her, reminding her that her life remains and that eternity allows her to pursue that which she longs."
The lich resisted the urge to dispel the darkness and view the speaker, if only to confirm his guess about his identity. He looked over at poor Valindra Shadowmantle, who seemed at peace for the first time since he'd resurrected her consciousness inside her dead body. Arklem Greeth knew well the shock of death, and of undeath. After his own transformation to lichdom, he had battled many of the same anxieties and losses that had so unsettled Valindra, and of course he had spent many years in preparation for that still-shocking moment.
Valindra's experience had been far more devastating to the poor elf. Her heritage alone meant that she had expected several more centuries of life; with elves, the craving for immortality was not nearly as profound a thing as the desperation of short-lived humans. Thus, Valindra's transformation had nearly broken the poor soul, and would likely have turned her into a thing of utter and unrelenting hatred had not the voice in the shadows and his associate unexpectedly intervened.
"He tells me that the effort to keep her calm will be great indeed," the voice said.
"As will the price, no doubt," Arklem Greeth said.
Soft laughter came back at him. "What is your intent, Archmage?"
"With?"
"Luskan."
"What remains of Luskan, you mean," Arklem Greeth replied, in a tone that indicated he hardly cared.
"You remain within the city walls," said the voice. "Your heart is here."
"It was a profitable location, well-situated for the Arcane Brotherhood," the lich admitted.
"It can be again."
Despite not wanting to play his hand, Arklem Greeth couldn't help but lean forward.
"Not as it was, to be sure, but in other ways," said the voice.
"All we have to do is kill Deudermont. Is that what you are asking of me?"
"I'm asking nothing, except that your plans remain known to me."
"That is not nothing," said Arklem Greeth. "In many circles, such a price would be considered extravagant."
"In some circles, Valindra Shadowmantle would lose her mind."
Arklem Greeth had no answer to that. He glanced again at his beloved.
"Deudermont is well-guarded," said the voice. "He is not vulnerable while still in Luskan. The city is under considerable stress, as you might expect, and Deudermont's future as governor will depend upon his ability to feed and care for the people. So he has turned to his friends in Waterdeep, by land and by sea."
"You ask me to be a highwayman?"
"I told you that I asked nothing other than to know your plans as you evolve them," said the voice. "I had thought that one such as you, who need not draw air, who feels not the cold of the sea, would be interested to know that your hated enemy Deudermont is desperately awaiting the arrival of a flotilla from Waterdeep. It is presently sailing up the coast and the soft belly of supply ships is too well guarded for any pirates to even think of attacking."
Arklem Greeth sat perfectly still, digesting the information. He looked again at Valindra.
"My friend is not in her mind any longer," said the voice, and Arklem Greeth sharpened his focus on the undead woman, and was greatly encouraged as she didn't melt into a well of despair.
"He has shown her possibilities," said the voice. "He will return to her to reinforce the message and help her through this difficult time."
Arklem Greeth turned to the magical darkness. "I'm grateful," he said, and sincerely.
"You will have many years to repay us," said the voice, and it melted away as the darkness dissipated.
Arklem Greeth went to his beloved Valindra, and when she didn't respond to him, he sat and draped an arm around her.
His thoughts, though, sailed out to sea.
"It has not been a good winter," Deudermont admitted to Drizzt and Regis in the palace that day. "Too many dead men, too many shattered families."
"And during it all, the idiots fought each other," Robillard interjected. "They should have been out fishing and hunting, preparing the harvested crops and pooling their supplies. But would they?" He scoffed and waved his hand at the city beyond the window. "They fought amongst themselves - high captains posturing, guildless rogues murdering...."
Drizzt listened to every word, but never took his eyes off Deudermont, who stared out the window and winced at every one of Robillard's points. There was no disagreement - how could there be, with smoke rising from every quarter of Luskan and with bodies practically lining the streets? There was something else in Deudermont's posture that, even more than the words, revealed to Drizzt how brutal the winter had been. The weight of responsibility bowed the captain's shoulders, and worse, Drizzt realized, was breaking his heart.
"The winter has passed," the drow said. "Spring brings new hope, and new opportunities."
Deudermont finally turned, and brightened just a bit. "There are promising signs," he said, but Robillard scoffed again. "It's true! High Captain Suljack sat behind me on that day when I was appointed as governor, and he has stood behind me since. And Baram and Taerl have hinted at coming around to a truce."
"Only because they have some grudge with Ship Rethnor and fear the new leader of that crew, this creature Kensidan, whom they call the Crow," said Robillard. "And only because Ship Rethnor ate well through the winter, but the only food Baram and Taerl could find came from the rats or came through us."
"Whatever the reason," Deudermont replied. "The Mirabarrans suffered greatly in the explosion of the Hosttower and have not opened the gates of the Shield District to the new Luskan, but with the spring, they may be persuaded to look toward the opportunities before us instead of the problems behind us. And we will need them this trading season. I expect Marchion Elastul will let the food flow generously, and on credit."
Drizzt and Regis exchanged concerned looks at that, neither overly impressed by the goodness of Elastul's heart. They had dealt with the man several times in the past, after all, and more often than not, had left the table shaking their heads in dismay.
"Elastul's daughter, Arabeth, survived the war and may help us in that," Deudermont said, obviously noting their frowns.
"It's all about food," Robillard said. "Who has it and who will share it, whatever the price. You speak of Baram and Taerl, but they're our friends only because we have the dark meat and the fungus."
"Curiously put," said Drizzt.
"From Suljack," Robillard explained, "who gets it from his friend in Ship Rethnor. Suljack has been most generous, while that young high captain of Rethnor ignores us as if we don't exist."
"He is unsure, like the Mirabarrans, perhaps," Regis offered.
"Or he is too sure of his position," Robillard said in a grim tone that Kensidan, had he heard, would have certainly taken as a warning.
"The spring will be our friend," Deudermont said as the door opened and his attendant indicated that dinner was served. "Caravans will arrive by land and by sea, laden with goods from the grateful lords of Waterdeep. With that bargaining power in my hands, I will align the city behind me and drag the high captains along, or I will rouse the city behind me and be rid of them."
"I hope for the latter," Robillard said, and Drizzt and Regis were not surprised.
They moved into the adjacent room and sat at Deudermont's finely appointed table, while attendants brought out trays of the winter's unexpected staple.
"Eat well, and may Luskan never be hungry again!" Deudermont toasted with his feywine, and all the others cheered that thought.
Drizzt gathered up knife and fork and went to work on the large chunk of meat on his plate, and even as that first morsel neared his lips, a familiar sensation came over him. The consistency of the meat, the smell, the taste....
He looked at the side dish that ringed his main course, light brown mushrooms speckled with dots of purple.
He knew them. He knew the meat - deep rothe.
The drow fell back in his chair, mouth hanging open, eyes unblinking. "Where did you get this?"
"Suljack," Deudermont replied.
"Where did he get it?"
"Kensidan, likely," said Robillard as both he, Deudermont, and Regis stared at Drizzt curiously.
"And he?"
Robillard shrugged and Deudermont admitted, "I know not."
But Drizzt was afraid that he did.
If Valindra Shadowmantle's corpse had indeed been animated, she didn't show it those hours subsequent to the strangers' visit in Arklem Greeth's subterranean palace. She didn't sway, didn't moan, didn't blink her dead eyes, and any attempts to reach the woman were met with utter emptiness.
"But it will pass," Arklem Greeth told himself repeatedly as he moved through the sewers beneath Illusk and Closeguard Island, collecting allies for his journey.
All the while, he considered the intruders to his subterranean palace. How had they so easily gotten past his many wards and glyphs? How had they even known that his extradimensional room had been anchored down there in the sewers? What magic did they possess? Psionics, he knew, from the one who had entered Valindra's consciousness to calm her, but were they truly powerful enough in those strange arts to utilize them to neuter his own skilled magical wards? An involuntary shudder coursed Greeth's spine - the first time anything like that had happened in his decades of lichdom - but it was true. Arklem Greeth feared the visitors who had come unbidden, and Arklem Greeth rarely feared anything.
That fear, as much as his hatred for Captain Deudermont, drove the lich along his course.
With an army of unbreathing, undead monsters behind him, Arklem Greeth went out into the harbor then out to sea, steadily, tirelessly moving south. He found more of his unbreathing soldiers in the deeper waters - ugly lacedon ghouls - and easily brought them under his sway. The undead were his to control. Skeletons and zombies, ghouls and ghasts, wights and wraiths proved no match for his superior and dominating willpower.
Arklem Greeth swept them up in his wake, continuing south all the while, paralleling the shore as he knew the Waterdhavian ships would do. His army needed no rest in the depths, where day and night were not so different. With their webbed, clawing hands, the lacedons moved with great speed, weaving through the watery depths with the grace of dolphins and the impunity of a great shark or whale. They stayed low, far from the surface, sliding past the reeds and weeds, crossing low over reefs, where even the mighty and fierce eels stayed deep in their holes to avoid the undead things. Only through a great expenditure of magic could Arklem Greeth hope to pace the aquatic ghouls, and so he commanded a pair to tow him along with them. Every so often, the powerful lich opened dimensional doors, transporting himself and his ghoulish coachmen far ahead of the undead army, that he would note the ships long before engaging them.
Well-versed in the ways of the ocean, Greeth suspected that the ships might be near when he first spotted the inevitable companions of any such flotilla: a lazily-swimming and circling school of hammerhead sharks, common as vultures along the perilous Sword Coast.
Greeth could have led his lacedon army wide of the small group, but the lich had grown bored of the long journey. He willed his escorts in a straight-line ascent toward the school, and he started the festivities by rolling forth a ball of lightning at the nearest sharks. They popped and jerked at the sparking intrusion, a pair hung stunned in the water and several others darted fast out of sight in the murky water.
The lacedons swam furiously past Greeth, their hunger incited. They tore into the closest sharks, and the stunned pair thrashed and rolled. A ghoulish arm was torn free, and floated down past the amused Arklem Greeth. He watched as another lacedon, clamped firmly in the jaws of a hammerhead, was shaken to pieces.
But the undead could not be intimidated, and they swarmed the shark with impunity, their claws slashing through its tough skin, filling the dark water with blood.
The school came on in full, a frenzy of biting and tearing, a bloodlust that made ghoul and shark alike a target for those razor teeth.
Greeth stayed safely to the side, reveling in the fury, the primal orgy, the ecstasy and agony of life and pain, death and undeath. He measured his losses, the ghouls bitten in half, the limbs torn asunder, and when he finally reached the point of balance between voyeuristic pleasure and practical consideration, he intervened in a most definitive way, conjuring a cloud of poison around the entirety of the battlefield.
The lacedons were immune, of course. The sharks fled or died, violently and painfully.
It took great concentration for Greeth to control the bloodthirsty ghouls, to keep them from pursuing, to put them back in line and on course, but soon enough the undead army moved along as if nothing had transpired.
But Greeth knew that they were even more anxious and eager than normal, that their hunger consumed them.
Thus, when at last those ships floated over Arklem Greeth's army, Greeth was well-prepared and his beastly army was more than ready to strike.
In the dark of night, the ships at half-sail and barely moving in still air and calm waters, Arklem Greeth turned his forces loose. Three score lacedons swam up beneath one boat like a volley of swaying arrows. One by one, they disappeared out of the water, and the archmage arcane could only imagine them scaling the side of the low, cargo-laden ship, padding softly onto the deck where half-asleep lookouts yawned with boredom.
The lich lamented that he wouldn't hear their dying screams.
He knew soon after that his ghoulish soldiers were tearing apart the crew and rigging, for the ship above him turned awkwardly and without apparent purpose.
A second ship came in fast, as Arklem Greeth had expected, and it was his to intercept. Many ships of the great ports were well-guarded from magical attacks, of course, with wards all along their decks and hull.
But those defenses were almost always exclusively above or just below the waterline.
The lich led the way in to the bottom of the ship with a series of small magical arrows. He concentrated his firing and soon the water near his target points hissed and fizzed as the arrows pumped acid into the old wood of the hull. By the time Arklem Greeth arrived at the spot, he could easily punch his hand through the compromised planks.
From that hand flew a small fiery pea, arcing up into the hull before exploding into a raging fireball.
Again the lich could only imagine the carnage, the screams and confusion!
In moments, men began diving into the water, and his lacedons, their job complete on the first ship, plunged in behind. What beauty those creatures showed in their simple and effective technique, swimming up gracefully below the splashing sailors, tearing at their ankles, and dragging them down to watery deaths.
The ship he had fireballed continued on its course, not slowing in the least as it reached the first target. Arklem Greeth couldn't resist. He swam up and poked his head out of the water, and nearly cackled with glee in watching the tangled ships share the hungry fire.
More ships approached from every direction. More desperate men jumped into the water and the lacedons dragged them down.
All the darkness echoed with horrified screams. Arklem Greeth picked a second target and turned it, too, into a great fiery disaster. Calls for calm and composure could not match the terror of that night. Some ships dropped sail and clustered together, while others tried to run off under full sail, committing the fatal error of separating from their companion vessels.
For they couldn't outrun the lacedons.
The ghouls fed well that night.
