"Where would ye be after leading us?" Khlinat roared.

"To the warehouse behind you," Churchstone said. "We're better prepared for them there."

Jherek risked a glance at the warehouse, noting its disheveled appearance and the open bay doors. The interior was dark and immense. He turned to the dwarf, knowing Khlinat had fallen into the leadership role for the group of dockworkers surrounding them through his prowess and loud voice. The Flaming Fist sergeant had recognized it as well.

"Khlinat," Jherek said, blocking another trident thrust and pinning the weapon against the crate. Before the sahuagin had a chance of pulling the trident back, the young sailor flicked the hook out and caught his opponent through the gills. Jherek gave a twist and a yank that tore the sahuagin's throat out. "Retreating does make sense. We made this line and we held them. Now it's time to fall back and meet them again."

The dwarf fought gamely, avoiding a thrown javelin, then batting aside a trident thrust and slamming home another hand axe into the sahuagin's thorax. "Aye, swab, ye have the right of it." He blocked another blow and missed one of his own. "At times, I'm a prideful man. I don't like backing away from no fight."

"By Tymora's favored smile and grace, you sawed-off runt!" Churchstone roared. "You're not retreating from a damned fight. You're moving to better wage it."

"Have a care as to how ye address me," the dwarf roared back. "Else, if ye should survive the blades of these sea devils, ye will soon have another fight on yer hands."

"Khlinat," Jherek said, wanting desperately for the dwarf to listen to him. Even though they'd fought the arriving sahuagin to a standstill, they were losing men.

The dwarf nodded. "Aye, swab, and I hear ye." He raised his voice from a roar to a bellow. "To the warehouse, damn ye lazybones! Regroup and let's show these beasties the color of their gizzards!"

Jherek hung the hook from the sash at his waist and reached out for a lantern hanging from a nearby pole. Holding it by the wire handle, he smashed it against the crates.

At his side, Khlinat did the same. Flames twisted up with a liquid whoosh. "Them what owns them crates," the dwarf said as they gave ground together, "ain't going to be any too happy seeing how we treated their goods."

"If they live after tonight," Jherek grimly pointed out.

"Aye, swab, and ye have the right of it."

Jherek turned and ran, spotting the two groups of sahuagin closing in from the sides. Another moment and their position would have been overrun.

They fled into the warehouse, going all the way to the back of the cavernous structure. The warehouse was two stories tall. Crates occupied space on either side, leaving the middle section clear. The scarcity of crates offered mute testimony about the way shipping had slowed since the attacks on Waterdeep and the sea lanes. On either side at the back, steeply angled wooden steps led up to the second floor.

"Don't stop till you reach the back!" Churchstone ordered.

Jherek and Khlinat ran at the back of the group with the Flaming Fist sergeant. The young soldier couldn't help noticing the grin on Churchstone's face. Glancing back over his shoulder, Jherek saw that the sahuagin had no compunctions at all about following them into the building. At least thirty-five or forty sea devil warriors ran after them.

Churchstone wheeled suddenly and lifted his sword. "Now!" he shouted.

Jherek only caught the flash of movement overhead, then a huge cargo net dropped down, snaring the sahuagin. Several of them dropped to the warehouse floor, hammered by the great weight of the thick hawser ropes. The sea devils struggled to get up. A few of them sawed at the ropes with bone knives fashioned with chipped edges. The ropes slid away greasily, twisting from the sahuagin's grip as well as against the knife edges.

Then a pair of flaming torches dropped from the overhead floor as well. From the way the cargo netting caught fire, running in rivulets as it greedily consumed everything it touched, Jherek knew it had been soaked in oil. The sahuagin whistled shrilly in pain.

It was a hard way to die, Jherek knew, and he felt bad for the creatures. It wasn't a way he'd have killed them. Malorrie had trained him to be a warrior, to fight the right fights for the right reasons. This was more like extermination. He felt the warmth of the flames against his cheeks as the men around him hooted in triumph and pleasure.

Jherek glanced away, catching Khlinat's eye.

"A bad bit of business," the dwarf commented. "But 'twixt a rock and a hard place, a wise man makes do and lives for the morrow."

"I know," Jherek replied.

Khlinat slapped him on the shoulder. "Buck up, swabbie, we've a city yet to save should the gods prove willing."

Out in the harbor, the bunyip roar pealed again.

The chill of dread raced through Jherek when he heard the sound. Resolutely, he steeled himself. Come what may, he knew he had unfinished business with his father. He followed the dwarf, skirting around the dead and dying among the sahuagin as they cooked. Archers on the floor above feathered any that appeared on the verge of escaping.

Out in the fresh air and clear of the smoke trapped inside the warehouse, Jherek stared across Baldur's Gate harbor. The battle ravaged the city along the docks. Flames twisted up through the roofs of buildings that would be nothing but ash by morning.

His destiny, he thought grimly, was supposed to be found somewhere in the chaotic debris, but he had no idea how he was going to find it.

"Pacys! It's happening-Baldur's Gate is under attack!"

Snarled in the layers of bedding, Pacys strove to come awake. As always, the bard reached first for his yarting. It lay on the floor beside the bed, barely fitting the hollow between the furniture and the wall in the small room. Until late, the yarting was the only thing of real value he'd carried in years. His fingers slid over the strings and the smooth wood out of habit, then he opened his eyes.

"What?" he croaked.

"We're being attacked by the sahuagin." Delahnane Kubha stood on the other side of the small bedroom and peered out the single open window. The flimsy pale green drapes blew over her naked body, illuminated by the lone taper on the small nearby table.

She was forty and still lushly curved, bursting with womanly charms that had warmed the old bard's bed for nearly a tenday. Her blond hair had strands of gray in it now, but her confidence in herself kept her from coloring it. She worked as a serving wench in the Blushing Mermaid tavern only a few streets back of the room she kept here. Pacys had enjoyed a friendship that was more than friendship with her the last twenty years whenever he was in the city.

Holding onto the yarting, not bothering to cover his nakedness, Pacys rushed to the window. His hard life was mapped across his lean body in scars and wrinkles, creating highlights on his nut-brown skin. He kept his head shaved, and went whiskerless as well. Jutting silver eyebrows arched over his light hazel eyes. He was thin, his long bones overlaid with stringy muscle.

Pacys had been in Baldur's Gate almost two tendays since arriving by ship. After the attack on Waterdeep and his talk with the merman Narros, he'd come to the city hoping to find more mention of the prophecy he'd been told of, more of the song he was chasing.

Since arriving in Baldur's Gate, he'd only experienced a few times when the song he searched so desperately for- had been promised-had come to him. They'd been troubling pieces, crammed with trepidation and the iron smell of blood.

Now, as he gazed out over the battling groups below and out in the harbor, the song filled his head. It was an extension of the piece he'd unconsciously played in Narros's home after having been invited to the merman shaman's dwelling. Pacys knew it was the piece concerning the hero of the tale.