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Laaqueel regretfully let go of the hammer offeree, feeling it disappear from the physical plane. She started another prayer and pushed her way through Bouundaar. She pointed at the staircase, telling the chieftain to put sahuagin on guard there. By the time she reached the flight of stairs leading down into the area where the windlass that controlled the nets was, she had her next spell ready.

The windlass room was large, forty feet by forty feet, she estimated. The device was in the center of the room, constructed of several ratcheting gears that clanked hurriedly as the three men operating it tried to raise the nets again. The nets held wards that normally repelled most fish from the harbor, allowing no sharks or other predatory marine creatures, but they wouldn't stop the sahuagin forces.

"Damned fish-heads!" one of the men bawled in warning.

Laaqueel heard the thrum of crossbows behind her and watched as the short quarrels buried their vicious barbs in flesh and wood. She thrust out a hand and the magic spewed from her palm, plunging the room into total blackness. With their greater night vision, the sahuagin weren't totally blinded. The light spilling in the door leading down to the windlass area was enough.

The crossbow quarrels put another man down at the windlass. Laaqueel vaulted to the floor, silent as her own shadow, and swung her sword. The keen edge hamstrung the man trying desperately to turn the ten-foot tall wheel. He screamed and reached for his injured feet. The malenti ended the screaming by slashing his throat.

Without remorse, she grabbed one of the Waterdhavian Guardsmen on the floor, locating him by the string of curses and pained cries that came from him. She levered the man up in one hand, then unerringly shoved him into the grind of gears operating the nets.

The man screamed anew as the big gears bit into him, but the sounds quickly went away as the gears drew him in. Bone crunched and the metallic strain of the gears trying to mesh filled the basement.

The gears stopped.

Bouundaar's men worked efficiently in the darkness, talking to each other in their own tongue as they covered the floor and tracked down the last of the surface dwellers. All of them were dead by the time Laaqueel reached the top of the stairs.

More sahuagin held the bottom of the dual stairwells. Nets stretched above them, blocking entrance into the room.

Laaqueel ran back out onto the sandy beach in front of Smuggler's Bane Tower. Her gaze raked across Waterdeep Harbor and spied Drifting Eel at once. Mermen attacked the vessel, some of them riding the giant sea horses they used as mounts. Thankfully there weren't as many of them as Laaqueel had feared. The advance party group had struck the mermen hard, as Iakhovas had planned.

The one-eyed prince remained standing in the prow of the pentekonter, his massive cloak billowing in the breeze behind him. The other three ships followed sedately behind, disgorging more sahuagin into the great harbor.