The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(62)
The two were back on the road soon after, riding hard to the south on their untiring mounts. Artemis Entreri didn’t utter a word all the way back to Port Llast.
And Drizzt didn’t press him.
THE TIP OF SEA SPRITE’S MAST
MINNOW SKIPPER GLIDED OUT OF LUSKAN’S HARBOR, TURNING ABOUT Closeguard Isle to slip out into the strong spring currents. Standing at her prow, holding the guide rope, Drizzt watched the familiar sights drift past, for this was the skyline he had viewed for years and years on end in his younger days. All that was missing was the strange, treelike structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, with its seemingly organic, spreading limbs.
Drizzt wasn’t pleased with any view of Luskan now, though. He had never been overly fond of the harsh and often lawless place, particularly since the fall of Captain Deudermont, but for several years, he had called this port home. That had all been shattered, of course, but somehow, out here on the water, that most unpleasant memory, Deudermont’s death to Kensidan the Crow of Ship Rethnor, seemed to fade to a distant blur. Drizzt’s thoughts cascaded back beyond those darkest days to the years when he and Catti-brie had sailed with Deudermont aboard Sea Sprite out of this very harbor.
A smile spread on the drow’s face as he remembered the thrill of the chase as Sea Sprite hunted down a pirate. He would stand ready on her deck, scimitars in hand, Catti-brie beside him with Taulmaril the Heartseeker, ready to rake the pirate’s deck and set the stage for Drizzt and Guenhwyvar to lead the boarding charge.
The drow closed his eyes and let the wind and the brine rush about him, slowly turning his head this way and that to catch the thicker scents and better feel the heavier salty gusts. On one such movement, he opened his eyes briefly, enough to see the tip of the mast of an old wreck that had been driven up against the rocks in the south harbor.
Sea Sprite.
It was her mainmast, Drizzt knew, trailing down under the dark waters to the shattered hull of the destroyed ship. That any sizable portion of the schooner remained at all intact in the rough waters around Luskan was a testament to her wondrous design and workmanship, but that hardly comforted Drizzt as he stood at the rail, looking at the lost glory of Captain Deudermont.
And Robillard, he recalled, the crusty ship’s wizard, a mage of considerable power and possessed of a tongue as sharp as his frequent lightning bolts. Robillard long served as Deudermont’s trump card at sea, for no wizard was more adept at splitting the beams of an enemy ship right at the waterline, or at filling sails with wind to speed Sea Sprite along.
Robillard would likely be long dead now, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if the man had left this world in a blaze of fireballs and the hail of ice storms, slicking the deck of a pirate ship. That thought brought a grin back to Drizzt, as he remembered when Robillard had used that very tactic on one pirate vessel in heavy seas. How the pirate archers had pitched and tumbled, and nearly half the crew had slid into the open ocean, making for an easy catch.
He thought of Thrice Lucky then, young Maimun’s ship.
“Young Maimun?” Drizzt whispered aloud, for surely that one, too, was long gone from this world. He had taken up Deudermont’s mantle as the greatest pirate hunter of the Sword Coast, Drizzt had heard, after the fall of Luskan to the five high captains, and for years afterward, Drizzt had often heard the name Thrice Lucky whispered in taverns up and down the Sword Coast, most often in gratitude and with raised mugs from those abiding the law, and accompanied by curses from those who walked a less seemly road.
Drizzt locked his gaze on Sea Sprite’s mast, showing in the low wake clearly whenever the waves rolled past.
He gave a solemn nod to the proud vessel, to the noble crew and captain who had taken her so far for so long. It was a good memory, he decided. Good times with good friends doing good deeds.
And the excitement, always that, with a pirate sail on every horizon, it seemed, and a crew ever ready and eager to take up the chase.
“The finest ship to ever sail the Sword Coast,” Drizzt remarked when Dahlia walked up beside him, to find him still staring at the mast.
“Not any more, it would seem,” she said flippantly.
“Aye, a long tale, and one worth telling,” Drizzt replied. “And no better place to tell it than on a ship’s deck on the open waters, under the stars and with the lull of the ocean nodding truth to every word.”
Dahlia draped her arms around Drizzt and he tensed up for just a moment, then forced himself to relax. Somehow that touch didn’t seem right to him. Not out here. Not on these same waters he had so often sailed with Catti-brie.
“We’ve no private cabin, but we can find a private place,” the elf woman whispered into his ear. “Do you think the ocean will nod about that?”
Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to offer a chuckle, a half-hearted one, and he understood that Dahlia had recognized it as such when she unwrapped her arms and stepped back from him. He turned to her, trying to find some way to soothe that unintentional sting, but he diverted it instead, seeing their three other companions moving to join them.
“I’m not for knowin’ how these bowleggers take to this pitchin’ and rollin’ days on end,” Ambergris grumbled. She planted her feet wide and square, but even then the slightest pitches of Minnow Skipper had her stumbling side-to-side. That just made her dig her heels in harder, but to little positive effect.