Читать «Rising Tide (зксм-1)» онлайн - страница 152

"Aye," a black sailor interrupted. "I heard Arnagus the Shipwright even lost a vessel that he was building in dry dock when the water lifted it out to the harbor. I've been told the waves were twenty and thirty feet tall."

"The sahuagin don't have anything to do with sorcery," Sabyna pointed out.

"Well, they did this night," Narik told her. "In addition to the thousands of sahuagin and the storm, there were all manner of sea creatures who fought side by side with the sea devils."

"How was that possible?" Jherek asked.

"That's what the mages in Waterdeep are asking right now," the sailor answered. "The city's properly defended and warded, but that attack, even with the extra manpower in port, was disastrous."

"Does Waterdeep still stand?" Sabyna asked.

"Aye," Narik replied. "By the grace of the gods and the strength of Lord Piergeiron's arm, and Maskar Wands's and Khelben Arunsun's magic. Many lives were lost, but the sahuagin were turned. In the meantime, shipping's all but stopped coming out of Waterdeep. Merchants are sitting in the ruins of the Dock Ward offering princely sums for any ship that would take their goods out. The only news we've got out of there has been from caravans traveling overland."

"In part, most cargo captains fear the return of the sahuagin," a skinny sailor with a wandering eye said, "and they have been responsible for bringing a few ships down. They sail those cursed mantas and attack any ship alone at sea."

Jherek remembered the sahuagin attack on Butterfly, feeling a chill rattle through him now that he knew that assault had been part of a larger agenda.

"Most cargo ships don't carry a crew big enough to repel a manta complement of sahuagin," the sailor with the wandering eye went on. "I've heard they've taken twenty ships over the last five days, and mayhap more than that since these stories were given only by survivors of attacks."

"The sahuagin haven't ever meant to leave survivors,"

Narik said, "not unless they were planning on torturing them later."

Jherek couldn't believe the numbers of ships the sailors were talking about, or the fact that the sahuagin were acting together so well. For the moment, he forgot his own problems, forgot even that Sabyna had not taken her hand from his arm. His mind wandered, wrestling with the problem of how the attack had taken place and what it must have been like to be there. He wished Malorrie was there to talk to. Though Madame litaar was familiar with history and battles and even politics, Malorrie relished in such discussions. He silently wished he'd been there, able to lend his blade to Waterdeep's defense.

"What the sea devils haven't claimed," Narik went on, "the pirates have. They seem to have gathered in the Nelanther and decided that Waterdeep's ill luck was their good fortune. They've taken a dozen and more ships that we know of that's been bound in either direction in the Sea of Swords."