Games We Play

(This is from the viewpoint of Foley, a halfling thief, some years later.)

While I’m talking, someone can top off my wine, and none of the watered-down stuff this time. I might not be a lay-at-home hairyfoot but I can tell the difference.

So where was I? Oh yes. The Moonshaes. Apparently they are made up of a number of different islands, the Moonshaes, and that’s about all I know about them. Rokellen, that human priest of the dead, made a passing comment that we did not really want to go there lest we be judged, but I’d rather judged on dry land than stuck to an oar.

About this time the wind started pressing harder. Instead of putting up the sails, they were taken down and we were told to row faster. At the end of our shift, the boat was rocking so hard that if I had anything left in my stomach it would be part of my neighbor’s bunk. I sure as all six-hundred and some odd hells couldn’t sleep, even after the exhausting work.

The storm got worse and worse and we could hear the thunder right outside and see the blinding light out the hatch above. Only “above” was occasionally “beside” and “below” became the wall. If we weren’t all chained to our bunks, we would be bruised and broken. Hafcriss was certainly looking nervous. When the water started coming down the stairs in more than a trickle he got even more nervous. When the first shift was unshackled and pulled upstairs, he got more nervous still. The sound of one of the masts leaving the ship didn’t help any of us, and our half-orc keeper spent half the time looking up the stairs. Squinting against the wind and ocean water, anyway.

The bulkier members of our shift started pulling out of their shackles best they could. Normally this would earn them a sound beating and a night in the box or dangled over the edge, but with no one paying us attention we felt free to act as desperately as we could. No, I didn’t do anything, girl. I’m all of three and a half feet tall, godsblesset. What do you expect me to do against iron bands? What would you do against iron bands? Sing at them? I would like to see you try.

There’s a sound that is made by the oars pulling against the wood of the ship in time to the drums, a sound that after a few weeks you don’t even hear anymore, but you hear when they stop. Hafcriss must have heard them stop when he went on top, even in the wind and the problems of the floor sometimes being a wall. We heard the single set of footsteps. We heard him praying to his dirty orc gods. Then the world exploded.

Tymora smiled on us and drove the ship onto some rocks, splitting it neatly in half and freeing up, hells, I don’t know, the tall elf Dane I think. For whatever reason he stayed around to pull the rest of us out of our shackles. Those of us who survived, at any rate. I haven’t wasted your time with the names of anyone who didn’t survive, or survived and I never heard about again.

The storm was fading away as the ship settled a bit on the rocks, but did not sink. Tymora doubly blessed us by not only setting us free but putting us on an island not a dozen miles from the Moonshaes. Myself and Kumar, both rather agile climbers, got up on deck and saw what we suspected — no crew, no Hafcriss and the remains of sails swaying in the wind. We were, completely and utterly, free.

Not utterly. The shackles on our arms and legs were still not helping us move around, but we could move.

Colwyn, Kumar and Sully decided it would be best to go down to the solid ground of the beach and see where we were. Dwarf, half-elf and half-orc, going to make life safe, how kind of them. Me, I could see where we were; a few feet from the captain’s cabin and whatever goods he had hiding within. So Dane and Rokellen and I went to take a look.

There was a lot of nothing but a knife and a whetstone and the keys. Now we were free, at least three of us. The other two let me keep the knife, though why I don’t know. I handed the keys to Dane and went to the only other thing in here that was of any interest; a hatch in the floor.

Climbing down the ladder was interesting but not too hard. It was wet and at an odd angle from the way our half of the boat landed. In it was the captain’s private hold which held ruined grain in ruined sacks, ruined wine in ruined barrels, and a large, unruined chest.

The chest contained many things which I forget, and a few things that I don’t. The others were upset that I had forgotten these things but even now I don’t completely remember. Maps and some kind of brass thing for finding yourself on a map, for instance, and a large unstrung crossbow and some bolts for it. And the string for the crossbow.

At the time I didn’t know it was the string and this caused quite a problem later, but I’ll tell you lot about that later. Maybe much later. All you have to know is at the time the crossbow was just a really big club.

Also tied up in a corner, bruised from all the barrels and things bouncing around, was a young human girl who said she was Melisana and that she was the daughter of some rich Moonshae merchant. We were terribly nice to her at that point, because it always does to keep your prisoners from knowing they’re prisoners for as long as possible.

Outside, the other three were making the beach safe for ex-slaves everywhere in their own way. Hafcriss survived the crash and was approaching them and ordering them around. Kumar says he was very nice about offering to let Hafcriss live if he let them free of their shackles. Hafcriss didn’t take kindly to this, but he didn’t have to take unkindly for long when you have three unhappy, mobile and capable ex-slaves and all you have is a whip and a dagger.

As it happened, he also had some keys, so by the time we came down with our new guest in tow, they were free and looking around the wreckage. It was still raining and none of us knew how to build a fire out of nothing. Not even the darkie elf, who at one point during our captivity was going on about his people’s oneness with the woods.

We ended up cutting the tatters of sail to make a kind of tent and set up a watch in case. No one killed me overnight, so that’s as good as we had to a truce at this point, and that’s good enough for me