A Raft of Choices
The sleek, sharp, dark grey-green craft glid half-menacing, half-playful through the interminable morass. The vessel seemed, in a place where to all appearances there was nowhere to go, nonetheless to know keenly where it was bound.
From the well-informed seclusion of his shady bridge, Fleetmaster Tyskgart Knuckleswift beheld his latest, temporary flagship with satisfaction. A perfect miniature replica, save in colour, of the Black Ark Sheathed Severance, his Marish Elver was propelled speedily below through the filth by the amphibious progeny of the Ark’s bondbeast, a formidable if juvenile salt-krakadril. And with the eyeless reconnaissance of his Dhom-Hain hirelings to direct it, the Elver had quickly been able to monopolise a critical stretch of the apparently pathless swamp’s remotely navigable waterways.
While his current ally the Tidecaster Dreibdh Righbannach seemed less impressed, the Idoneth could hardly avoid, Tyskgart reflected, the dreich and drear disposition fate had laid upon them. The wetwitch and her retinue proved their usefulness every day, and besides, the Fleetmaster knew, even Dreibdh would shortly be required to be pleased by coldly profitable fact, like it or not in her bitter soul.
‘You insist on seeing them together still?’ the Isharann cut in, repetitive and lowering as ever.
‘Aye. They should be softened up enough by now by hours of each other’s presence. I did not ride the road a while afoot for nought, Tidecaster. It is ever good to be reminded of the refreshing effect of strange company.’
‘That is what you consider myself and mine? Refreshment?’
‘Hardly, though some might say I’d be more reasonable and wise to fear the reverse,’ Tyskgart laughed, light and open of countenance as ever. ‘No, Tidecaster. Stop cavilling. You and I are kin, if from afar. These others…we will see.’
‘An Akhelian is among them, closer kin by far to me than you, scourgling,’ Dreibdh objected.
‘Ah, yes, and you want me to pledge my crew to his master out of hand? Or perhaps slay him at once over some…intimate…old wound? As I say, we will see,’ Tyskgart insisted, unruffled. ‘Send a thrall to bring them on the bridge. It will do them good to see proof your folk do such service.’
They were shown in anon, the lean, lank hobgrot in his frogcladding, the swart prize-fighting Ogroid daubed in troggoth and gold, and the much anticipated Akhelian Envoy, elegant and deadly atop the hideous noose of bone and feculent cartilage from which he would not dismount for a moment. Tyskgart bade them sit for the form of the thing, knowing full well all would shun the perceived weakness of acceptance, lolling comfortably himself in his angular captain’s chair, bare headed and unarmed, not counting knives.
‘As you can see I have good friends among the Idoneth. They have persuaded me to hear out Pearlgrave’s message first.’
The Akhelian seemed to disdain artifice and showed his confidence openly. ‘You live to raid, captain. Some day you must die to raid too. Or must you? Take our Emperor’s offer, and find out.’
‘A rare prize,’ the Fleetmaster conceded, ‘even among aelvendom, but you must concede it is a lean one, too, if the Drowned Emperor only offers eternity. What else?’
‘Victory,’ the Akhelian stated without even momentary hesitation. ‘These others’ destinies are written in letters of blood and filth. Letters that will pass from the surface of this swamp like bubbles as Pearlgrave arises.’
‘Most poetic,’ Tyskgart sincerely complimented the knight. ‘You see the good of the Idoneth is close to my heart. My allies would have me ask of your intentions towards fellow Deepkin?’
‘Only the best,’ the envoy declared. ‘We offer them our wisdom, our protection, our powers, our deathlessness and our mighty deity, soon to wake and wreak desolation upon all who deny him.’
Tyskgart did not even trifle to check Dreibdh’s expression. ‘Passing fair. Now, I am a civilised sailor and constant trader. I should be intrigued to hear next from our worthy citizen here.’
The Ogroid managed a grunt that was also rich in mirth. ‘You heard the rotted fish offer, nothing but their life-in-death. You’se a man what wants to be rich. We use your sort in Mou’Terib. If you tough enough to last.’
‘Simplicity has ever its own eloquence,’ the Corsair commander observed with easy courtesy. ‘Little more needs to be said, I think. Now, you, hobgrot?’
The third creature peered uneasily at its host. ‘You sharp-ears all the same. No vizhun, no prowgress, like. But his illustrialness notissed you grabbed the waterway nice n’ quick. He could use thatattitood.’
The Fleetmaster frowned, for the first time. Then he rose from his seat, fleetly seized up something from a nearby ledge and quarrelled the Akhelian through the throat without further cogitation.
‘Aye. We are not blood slaves, nor gang lackeys. We will take, not earn, beside you while we care to. Help my thralls and corsairs rid me of these excrescences,’ he commanded, gesturing to the still dumbfounded Ogroid and flailing, riderless skeleton eel.
A matter of minutes later, a verbal accord with Goadfist was formed, three strange carcasses were disposed of and devoured by the surrounding wetlands, and Dreibdh Righbannach, at last, was smiling.
