“Drizzt!” Regis cried, seeing it too.
And the halfling’s friend was gone, just gone, when the fireball exploded all around the barrels and the front of the building backing them.
Sea Sprite tacked hard against the current at the mouth of the Mirar River. Occasional lightning bolts reached out at her from the northern bank, where a group of Hosttower wizards fought desperately to hold back Brambleberry’s forces at the northern, longer span of Harbor Cross, the westernmost bridge across the Mirar.
“We would need to lose a score of men to each wizard downed, you claimed, if we were to have any chance,” Deudermont remarked to Robillard, who stood beside him at the rail. “But it would seem that Lord Brambleberry has chosen his soldiers well.”
Robillard let the sarcasm slip past as he, too, tried to get a better summation of the situation unfolding before them. Parts of the bridge were aflame, but the fires seemed to be gaining no real traction. One of Brambleberry’s wizards had brought up an elemental from the Plane of Water, a creature that knew no fear of such fires.
One of the enemy wizards had responded with an elemental summoning of his own, a great creature of the earth, a collection of rock, mud, and grassy turf that seemed no more than a hillside come to life, sprouting arms of connected stone and dirt with boulder hands. It splashed into the river to do battle, its magical consistency strong enough to keep the waters from washing its binding dirt away, and both sides of the battle seemed intent on the other’s elemental proxy—or proxies as more wizards brought forth their own otherworldly servants.
A trumpet sounded on the southern end of Harbor Cross, from Blood Island, and out from Brambleberry’s position came a host of riders, all in shining armor, banners flying, spear tips glistening in the morning sun.
“Idiots,” Robillard muttered with a shake of his head as they charged out onto the wide bridge.
“Harder to port!” Deudermont shouted to his crew, recognizing, as had Robillard, that Brambleberry’s men needed support. Sea Spritegroaned under the strain as she listed farther, the river waters pounding into her broadside, threatening to drive her against one of the huge rocks that dotted the banks of the Mirar. She couldn’t hold her position, of course, but she didn’t need to. Her crack catapult team had a ball of fiery pitch away almost immediately, cutting through the wind.
A barrage of lightning bolts, capped by a fireball, slammed the bridge, and the riders disappeared in a cloud of smoke, flame, and blinding flashes.
When they re-emerged, a bit fewer in number, battered and seeming much less eager and much less proud, they were heading back the way they’d come.
Any sense of victory the Hosttower wizards might have felt, though, was short-lived, as Sea Sprite’s shot thundered into the side of one of the structures they used for cover, one of several compounds that had been identified as secret safehouses for the Arcane Brotherhood. The wooden building went up in flames, and wizards scrambled for safety.
Brambleberry’s men charged across the bridge once more.
“Fight the current!” Deudermont implored his crew as his ship groaned back the other way, barely holding her angle.
A second ball of pitch went flying, and though it fell short, it splattered up against the barricades used by the enemy, creating more smoke, more screaming, and more confusion.
Deudermont’s knuckles whitened as he grasped the rail, cursing at the less-than-favorable winds and tide. If he could just get Sea Sprite’s archers in range, they could quickly turn the tide of the fight.
The captain winced and Robillard gave an amused but helpless chuckle, as the leading edge of Brambleberry’s assault hit a stream of evocation magic. Missiles of glowing energy, lightning bolts, and a pair of fireballs burst upon them, sending men writhing and flailing to the ground, or leaping from the bridge, which shook under the continuing thunder of the earth elemental’s pounding.
“Just take her near to the wharf and debark!” the captain cried, and to Robillard, he added, “Bring it up.”
“You wanted to hold our surprise,” the wizard replied.
“We cannot lose this battle,” Deudermont said. “Not like this. Brambleberry stands in sight of the Luskan garrison, and they are watching intently, knowing not where to join in. And the young lord has the Hosttower behind him and soon to awaken to the fighting.”
“He has two secured bridges and the roads around the ruins of Illusk,” Robillard reminded the captain. “And a busy marketplace as buffer.”
“The Hosttower wizards need not cross to the mainland. They can strike at him from the northern edge of Closeguard.”
“They’re not on Closeguard,” Robillard argued. “High Captain Kurth’s men block the bridges, east and west.”
“We don’t know that Kurth’s men would even try to slow the wizards,” Deudermont stubbornly replied. “He has not professed his loyalty.”
The wizard shrugged, gave another of his all-too-common sighs, and faced the northern bank. He began chanting and waving his arms. Recognizing that the Hosttower kept several safehouses in the northern district, Robillard and some of Brambleberry’s men had set up a wharf just below the waves, but far enough out into the river for Sea Sprite to get up beside it safely. As Robillard ignited the magical dweomers he had set on the bridge, the front poles of the makeshift dock rose up out of the dark waters, guiding the helmsman.
Still, Sea Sprite wouldn’t have been able to tack enough to make headway and come alongside, but again, Robillard provided the answer. He snapped his fingers, propelling himself through a dimensional gate back to his customary spot on the raised deck behind the mainsail. He reached into his ring, first to bring up gusts of wind to help fill the sails then to communicate with his own elemental from the Plane of Water.Sea Sprite lurched and bucked, the river slamming in protest against her starboard side. The elemental set itself against the port side and braced with its otherworldly strength.
The catapult crew let fly a third missile, and a fourth right behind.
On the bridge, Brambleberry’s forces pushed hard against the magic barrage and the leading edge managed to get across just as Sea Spriteslid in behind the secret, submerged wharf, a hundred yards downriver. Planks went out beside the securing ropes, and the crew wasted no time in scrambling to the rail.
Robillard closed his eyes, trusting fully in his detection spell, and sensed for the magic target. Still with his eyes closed, the wizard loosed a searing line of lightning into the water just before the wharf’s guide poles. His shot proved precise, severing the locking chain of the wharf. Buoyed by a line of empty barrels, free of its shackles, the wharf lifted up and broke the water with a great splash and surge. The crew poured down.
“Now we have them,” Deudermont cried.
He had barely finished speaking, though, when a great crash sounded upriver, as a span of the century-old Harbor Cross Bridge collapsed into the Mirar.
“Back to stations!” Deudermont yelled to those crewmen still aboard. The captain, though, ran to the nearest plank and scrambled over the rail, not willing to desert his crewmen who had already left the ship. “Port! Port!” he cried for his ship to flee.
“By the giggling demons,” Robillard cursed, and as soon as Deudermont hit the wharf running, the wizard commanded his elemental to let go the ship and slide under it to catch the drifting flotsam. Then he helped free Sea Sprite by pulling a wand and shooting a line of lightning at the heavy rope tying her off forward, severing it cleanly.
Before the crew aft could even begin to free that second heavy rope, Sea Sprite swung around violently to the left, and a pair of unfortunate crewmen flipped over the rail to splash into the cold Mirar.