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.
CHAPTER 29
WRONG CHOICE
T here’s not enough,” Suljack complained to Kensidan after the most recent shipment of food had arrived. “Barely half of the last load.”
“Two-thirds,” Kensidan corrected.
“Ah, we’re running low, then?”
“No.”
The flat answer hung in the air for a long while. Suljack studied his young friend, but Kensidan didn’t blink, didn’t smirk, gave no expression at all.
“We’re not running low?” Suljack asked.
Kensidan didn’t blink and didn’t answer.
“Then why two-thirds, if that’s what it was?”
“It’s all you need,” Kensidan replied. “More than you need, judging from the load you dropped at the Red Dragon Inn. I trust that Deudermont paid you well for the effort.”
Suljack licked his lips nervously. “It’s for the better.”
“For whose better? Mine? Yours?”
“Luskan’s,” said Suljack.
“What does that even mean?” asked Kensidan. “Luskan’s? For the betterment of Luskan? What is Luskan? Is it Taerl’s Luskan, or Baram’s? Kurth’s or Rethnor’s?”
“It’s no time to be thinking of it like that,” Suljack insisted. “We’re one now, for the sake of all.”
“One, behind Deudermont.”
“Aye, and it was you that put me behind him that day when he became governor—and you should’ve been there! Then you’d know. The people ain’t caring about which high captain’s which, or about which streets’re whose. They’re needing food, and Deudermont’s helping.”
“Because you’re giving my supplies to Deudermont.”
“I’m giving them to Luskan. We’ve got to stand as one.”
“We knew the winter would be difficult when we goaded Deudermont to attack the Hosttower,” said Kensidan. “You do remember we did that, yes? You do understand the purpose of it all, yes?”
“Aye, I know it all full well, but things’ve changed now. The city’s desperate.”
“We knew it would be.”
“But not like this!” Suljack insisted. “Little kids starving dead in their mother’s arms…I could sink a ship and watch her crew drown and not think a bit about it—you know it—but I can’t be watching that!”
Kensidan shifted in his chair and brought one hand up to cup his chin. “So Deudermont is the savior of Luskan? This is your plan?”
“He’s the governor, and through it all, the people are with him.”
“With him all the more if he’s doling out food to them, I would expect,” said Kensidan. “Am I to expect him to be a friend to Ship Rethnor when Baram and Taerl unite against me? Am I to expect those now growing more loyal to Deudermont to turn from him to support my work?”
“He’s feeding them.”
“So am I!” Kensidan shouted, and all the guards in the room turned sharply, unused to hearing such volatility from the always-composed son of Rethnor. “As suits me, as suits us.”
“You want me to stop supplying him.”
“Brilliant deduction—you should apply to the Hosttower, if we ever revive it. What I want more is for you to remember who you are, who we are, and the point of all of this trouble and planning.”
Suljack couldn’t help himself as he slowly shook his head. “Too many fallen,” he said quietly, talking to himself more than to Kensidan. “Too high a price. Luskan stands as one, or falls.”
He looked up, into the eyes of an obviously unimpressed Crow.
“If you’ve not the stomach for this,” Kensidan began, but Suljack held up his hand to defeat the notion before it could be fully expressed.
“I will give him less,” he said.
Kensidan started to respond, sharply, but bit it off. He turned to one of his attendants instead, and said, “Get the other third of Suljack’s supplies packed on a wagon.”
“Good man!” Suljack congratulated. “Luskan stands as one, and she’ll get through this time of pain.”
“I’m giving them to you,” Kensidan said, his tone biting. “To you. They are yours to do with as you see fit, but remember our purpose in all of this. Remember why we put Deudermont together with Brambleberry, why we let the good captain know of the Hosttower’s involvement with the pirates, why we tipped the Silver Marches to the advances of the Arcane Brotherhood. Those events were planned with purpose—you alone among my peers know that. So I give to you your rations, in full, and you are to do with them as you judge best.”