Marked Man

Muld runs afoul of the pirate chief Hobnail.

15.

Marked Man

 

The sun was about to rise in the east when Muld hurried down the mostly empty streets toward the Westmark airship docking platform.    A handful of early laborers were heading for another day of work, but Muld was too preoccupied with his thoughts to pay any attention to them.

He took his usual shortcut down a side alley that cut a block of walking from his time and was halfway down the narrow path when suddenly something was tightening around his throat, cutting off breathing.

Rough hands slammed him into the side of the warehouse building and then the garrote loosened enough to let him gulp in just enough air.    But he now felt a sharp point of a dagger pressed against the underside of his chin.

“That is Vadt’s root poison, Master Magician.”   A voice hissed in his ear, “If it pricks your skin, you will die in less than a minute’s time.    Try to fight or shout out and I’ll poke you immediately.”

“Who are you and what do you want?”  Muld whispered hoarsely.

“You’re a marked man, Magician.    Hobnail has a 25,000 gold piece reward for your head, and twice that if you are delivered alive.    I’m just the lucky bounty hunter who found you.    I’m greedy, so I’d like to take you alive… I’m sure you’d like that too.”

“I’ll pay you twice as much to let me go,”  He whispered to the unseen bounty hunter.

“Uh huh; you’ve got 100,000 gold pieces in your pocket, do you?”

“On The Locust I have a chest with that much gold.   We’ve made a lot of money these past few months, as I’m sure you probably know.”

“Well, maybe you have that gold and maybe you don’t.”

“I can take you to it - no-one is aboard the ship right now and you can take it and escape long before anyone comes.”

For a long moment, the bounty hunter thought, holding the loosened garrote in one hand and the dagger with its tip touching Muld’s chin in his other hand.

"I couldn't carry that much and escape," he said.

"I have a Bag of Holding that you can use."

The bounty hunter thought about this for a few moments.

“If you trick me, Magician…” He finally threatened.

“No, sir, I simply want to live.   This is a business transaction, as I see it.”

The man snickered and pulled Muld away from the wall, keeping him turned from him, with the garrote around him like a collar and the dagger tip now pressed against the small of his back.

“All right, wizard, you take me to that gold.   Remember how easy it would be for me to prick you with the tip of my dagger, so don’t think of opening your mouth until we get aboard your ship.   I know this city, so don’t try anything that you’ll regret.”

“I won’t.”

“Then move - slowly and quietly.   If we meet anyone, keep your head bowed and keep quiet.”

“I understand.”

 

It wasn’t far to the docking platform, and there was no-one around as they slowly climbed the steps, the bounty hunter keeping such a tight rein on Muld that the Practical Magician knew he couldn’t do anything to escape.

It was awkward climbing the stairs with someone right behind you with a wire around your neck, but Muld was more concerned with stumbling than escape right then.   

At the top there were several crew members from some of the other airships, going about their business.   Muld did as he had been told and bowed his head.   The bounty hunter put his arm around him (while still holding the garrote) as if they were a pair of drunken buddies staggering home after a full night of drinking.  

Across the boarding platform onto the revamped Locust they went and Muld was ordered to pull the boarding platform onto the deck of the airship, so they wouldn’t be disturbed.    Muld complied without comment.

“So, magician, where’s the gold.”

“In a secret compartment in the captain’s cabin.   I’ll take you there.”

“You’ll open it too, wizard, so don’t get any ideas of traps.”

“I understand.”

 

Muld led him up to the captain’s cabin and unlocked the door.   It had been refurbished and the bounty hunter looked around greedily at the rich trappings, convinced immediately that the Practical Magician had the gold.

“This way,”   Muld told him and he led them to the back of the room and stopped before the wall.   “That candle sconce, when turned to the right, causes a secret panel to open up.   The gold is in a chest and the Bag of Holding is there as well.”

“Open it, but remember my dagger tip, magician.”

Muld moved the sconce and there was a clicking sound.   He then pushed the panel aside, revealing a closet size room.   In the middle of the little room was a large iron chest.

“Now open the chest.”  The bounty hunter told him and he knelt in tandem with Muld, not giving him any room to try anything.

Muld pulled a key from his vest pocket and unceremoniously unlocked it.     Before he could push it open, the garrote tightened around his neck.

“Sorry, magician, but as I said, I’m greedy.   Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to kill you.    Just knock you out long enough to take the gold and hide it, then drag you over to my airship - it is merely a merchant ship, so no-one will suspect a thing- and then take you to Hobnail.    200,000 in gold pieces - I will be as rich as a king.    That’s saying that you have that much in here, but if you don’t then I might have to kill you.”

Muld coughed and gagged, unable to answer, deprived of oxygen.   His head began to swim and then he lost consciousness.

 

The bounty hunter loosened the garrote - he didn’t want him to die, and once he was confident the elf magician was unconscious, he pulled him from the secret room.    Searching his body, he found no weapons, but left his belt pouch for now.

With caution he returned to the secret room and went to the chest.    The Practical Magician had reached down and grasped the lid, about to open it, when he had choked him, so it was unlikely that there was any sort of trap in the lid.     Still, he couldn’t be sure, so using his poisoned dagger, he slowly lifted it upward.

It opened on well-oiled hinges and to his delight the chest was full of gold.    It was probably twice as much as the magician had told him.   But there was no magic bag to be found inside.    There was far too much gold to simply carry.    Too much to empty into his pockets.    He might be able to pull the chest out of the room, then across the boarding platform (when he returned it into place) and down the docking platform onto The Belelsiav Merchant before dawn.   Then he could come back, tie up the elf and carry him onto the ship as well.   Anyone who saw them would think he was taking a drunken comrade back to his ship.

The crew aboard The Belelsiav Merchant would not ask any questions, for their families served Hobnail and they knew what would happen if they betrayed a bounty hunter that the pirate captain had sent.

Smiling at his plan, he glanced at the side of the chest and was pleased to see large handles there.     ‘It might be easier than I thought’ he told himself as he grasped one of them.

But as soon as he pulled on the handle, there was a clicking sound, the handle came off and at the same moment, the floor on each side of the chest swung open.

Before he could scream out, he was tumbling through a chute.   But it didn’t dump him into the hold as he had expected.   To his horror, a second trap door swung open and he found himself falling 60 feet headfirst onto the cobblestone pavement below.   The impact of his skull was the last thing he ever sensed.

 

Back on The Locust, the two trapdoors on either side of the chest continued to swing freely, leaving only a narrow solid path toward the chest in the very middle of the room that would have required careful placement of feet to reach the gold.    But after a few minutes, there was a twirling sound from somewhere below and the two trapdoors slowly closed, locking firmly back in place with twin clicking sounds.

 

Thirty minutes later, Muld slowly came to, unable to swallow easily and his head pounding.    Coughing hurt his throat, and he pulled himself up weakly.     Staggering as he looked into the secret compartment, he found what he expected - the lid closed and one of the handles gone.     The bounty hunter had taken the bait and now was either seriously injured or dead.

Of course he didn’t have that much gold in the chest - probably about 5,000 pieces, covering 15 lead bricks, but the chest had been designed as a trap in case pirates ever boarded the ship.   Luckily, the bounty hunter hadn't killed him when he didn't find the Bag of Holding in the chest as Muld had promised him.   But he'd had to make the offer seem practical to the man for him to agree to it.

 

Muld staggered out onto the deck.    The sun was up now, and a few people were milling around the docking platform.   A group of five were standing at the docking platform railing, looking down onto the street below.

He knew what they were looking at without asking.

A city guard walked out onto the platform and spoke to the crowd for a few moments, then yelled across at Muld.

“Sir?   A man has fallen to his death below.    Several witnesses say they saw this man leading another man with his head bowed - probably drunk- up the stairs of this docking building.    Have you seen anything?”

“I saw a drunken man staggering around up here a while ago, waving a dagger around and singing to himself,”   Muld answered in a croaking voice, for his throat still hurt.   He hated to lie, but he did not want to explain everything and delay the departure of The Locust.   Besides, if Hobnail did have a bounty for his life or capture, any publicity would make him easier to find.    He didn’t want to endanger his Guild and especially Syndi.

“How long ago did you see him, sir?”   The guard called across, writing notes on a piece of paper.

“Not long before dawn, but I didn’t pay much attention to him,”   Muld lied.

“Did you hear any screaming or shouts?”

“No, but I was down in the hold after that.”   His throat burned now from the effort of speaking loudly to the guard.  

The man nodded and after saying a few words to the others, departed.     Muld breathed a sigh of relief and went back into the captain’s cabin to find a healing potion.

Five minutes later his throat was almost back to normal, though he was still a bit hoarse.  He washed his face and changed into clean clothing, then pushed the disembarkment plank across to the docking platform and locked it in place.

As he worked, he pondered what he should tell his guild members.   If he was truthful, they would all be rather nervous throughout the trip, expecting pirates or bounty hunters to be coming at them from everywhere.     If the dead bounty hunter was the first one to find him, then perhaps others had not located him yet, and once they set off on The Locust they might not be located as easily.

Of course his celebrity status in Westmark would have made it quite easy for any bounty hunter to locate him.    So perhaps Hobnail had just posted the bounty upon him.   If that was the case, then a quick escape from Westmark would give him time to consider the situation and plan ahead.

He knew that the city guard might go to a cleric and have them use a spell to ask questions of the dead man.  If they did, they’d learn the whole story and then he’d be tied up explaining everything.    So they needed to leave as soon as possible.

Looking at his pocket watch, he found that he had about an hour before everyone arrived.    Muld decided that playing innocent and uninvolved was probably the smartest choice right now.    

He didn’t want to alarm his guild.     The Locust had several defensive weapons and with the new vacuum engines, it was very fast.    They could handle a pirate ship if it tried to attack them.     And there was ‘The Light of Yesh’ option if worse came to worse.

Muld shivered at the thought.    It would have to be desperate indeed for him to consider using that.

He began to pace anxiously, watching the light traffic coming and going on the docking platform.   Several times guards came and went onto the platform, but they left him alone.

He didn’t dare look down to see what they were doing with the dead bounty hunter’s body.   That might look suspicious, and what if they figured out how to trace the trajectory of his body as he fell?   But the trap chute had ejected him at a forty degree angle, so it should appear that he fell from somewhere else than right underneath The Locust.   Unless they were thinking of a chute, they most likely wouldn’t associate his fall with the airship.     

Still, Muld was very nervous, which was aggravated by little sleep and his anxiety over Syndi.    Then there was that mysterious sound and flash of light from his crystal ball.    Someone had spied on him, but had cleared the connection before he could see who it was.     Only Syndi, of all his guild members, had a crystal ball, and hers had been covered when he’d tried to contact her.  

It must have been the bounty hunter - perhaps working with a wizard.     Muld suddenly wondered if the trip was too risky.    Was he putting them all in danger?    He could deliver the cannons alone, for the arcane controls on The Locust allowed him to pilot the ship with no crew.

They’d be disappointed, but…

The sounds of talking, laughter and feet crossing the disembarking plank brought him out of his thoughts.   It was too late for that, for his friends had begun to arrive.