FAITH IN THE BETTER ANGELS
We go with the rising sun and the morning tide," Lord Brambleberry said to the gathering in the great room of his estate, "to deal a blow to the pirates as never before!"
The guests, lords and ladies all, lifted their crystal goblets high in response, but only after a moment of whispering and shrugging, for Brambleberry's invitation had mentioned nothing about any grand adventure. Those shrugs fast turned to nods as the news settled in, however, for rumors had been growing around "impatient Lord Brambleberry" for many months. He had made no secret of his desire to transform good fortune into great deed.
Up to that point, though, his blather had been considered the typical boasting of almost any young lord of Waterdeep, a game to impress the ladies, to create stature where before had been only finery. Many in the room carried reputations as worthy heroes, after all, though some of them had never set foot outside of Waterdeep, except traveling in luxury and surrounded by an army of private guards. Some other lords with actual battlefield credentials to their names had gained such notoriety over the bodies of hired warriors, only arriving on the scene of a victory after the fact for the heroic pose to be captured on a painter's canvas.
There were real heroes in the room, to be sure. Morus Brokengulf the Younger, paladin of great renown and well-earned reputation, had just returned to Waterdeep to inherit his family's vast holdings. He stood talking to Rhiist Majarra, considered the greatest bard of the city, perhaps of the entire Sword Coast, though he'd barely passed his twentieth year. Across the way from them, the ranger Aluar Zendos, "who could track a shadow at midnight," and the famous Captain Rulathon tapped glasses of fine wine and commiserated of great adventures and heroic deeds. These men, usually the least boastful of the crowd, knew the difference between the posers and the doers, and often relished in such gossip, and up to that moment they had been evenly split on which camp the striking young Lord Brambleberry would ultimately inhabit.
It was hard not to take him seriously at that moment, however, for standing beside the young Brambleberry was Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite, well known in Waterdeep and very highly considered among the nobility. If Brambleberry sailed with Deudermont, his adventure would be no ruse. Those true heroes in the room offered solemn nods of approval to each other, but quietly, for they didn't want to spoil the excited and humorously inane conversations erupting all across the hall, squealed in the corners under cover of the rousing symphony or whispered on the dance floor.
Roaming the floor, Deudermont and Robillard took it all in; the wizard even cast an enchantment of clairaudience so that they could better spy on the amusing exchanges.
"He's not satisfied with wealth and wine," one lady of court whispered. She stood in the corner near a table full of tallglasses, which she not-so-gracefully imbibed one after another.
"He'll add the word 'hero' to his title or they'll put him in the cold ground for trying," said her friend, with hair bound up in a woven mound that climbed more than a foot above her head.
"To get such fine skin dirty at the feet of an ogre...." another decried.
"Or bloody at the end of a pirate's sword," yet another lamented. "So much the pity."
They all stopped chattering at once, all eyes going to Brambleberry, who swept across their field of view on the dance floor, gracefully twirling a pretty young thing. That brought a collective sigh from the four, and the first remarked, "One would expect the older and wiser lords to temper this one. So much a waste!"
"So much to lose."
"The young fool."
"If he is in need of physical adventure...." the last said, ending in a lewd smile, and the others burst out in ridiculous tittering.
The wizard waved his hand to dismiss the clairaudience dweomer, having heard more than enough.
"Their attitude makes it difficult to take the young lord's desires seriously," Robillard remarked to Deudermont.
"Or easier to believe that our young friend needs more than this emptiness to sustain him," the captain answered. "Obviously he needs no further laurels to be invited to any of their beds. Which is a blessing, I say, for there is nothing more dangerous than a young man trying to hero himself into a lady's arms."
Robillard narrowed his eyes as he turned to his companion. "Spoken like a young man I knew in Luskan, so many years ago, when the world was calmer and my life held a steady cadence."
"Steady and boring," Deudermont replied without hesitation. "You remember that young man well because of the joy he has brought to you, stubborn though you have been through it all."
"Or perhaps I just felt pity for the fool."
With a helpless chuckle, Deudermont lifted his tallglass, and Robillard tapped it with his own.
Without fanfare, the four ships glided out of Waterdeep Harbor to the wider waters of the Sea of Swords the next morning. No trumpets heralded their departure, no crowds gathered on the docks to bid them farewell, and even the Chaplain Blessing for favorable winds and gentle swells was kept quiet, held aboard each ship instead of the common prayer on the wharves with sailors and dockhands alike.
From the deck of Sea Sprite, Robillard and Deudermont regarded the skill and discipline, or lack thereof, of Brambleberry's three ships as they tried to form a tight squadron. At one point, all three nearly collided. The quick recovery left Brambleberry's flagship, formerly Quelch's Folly,and since lettered with the additional " - Justice," with tangled rigging. Brambleberry had wanted to rename the ship entirely, but Deudermont had dissuaded him. Such practices were considered bad luck, after all.
"Keep us well back," Deudermont ordered his helmsman. "And to port. Always in the deeper water."
"Afraid that we might have to dodge their wreckage?" Robillard quipped.
"They are warriors, not seamen," Deudermont replied.
"If they fight as well as they sail, they'll be corpses," Robillard said and looked out to sea, leaning on the rail. He added, "Probably will be anyway," under his breath, but loudly enough so that Deudermont heard.
"This adventure troubles you," said Deudermont. "More than usual, I mean. Do you fear Arklem Greeth and your former associates so much?"
Robillard shrugged and let the question hang in the air for a few heartbeats before replying, "Perhaps I fear the absence of Arklem Greeth."
"How so? We know now what we have suspected for some time. Surely the people of the Sword Coast will be better off without such treachery."
"Things are not always as simple as they seem."
"I ask again, how so?"
Robillard merely shrugged.
"Or is it that you hold some affinity for your former peer?"
Robillard turned to look at the captain and said, "He is a beast...a lich, an abomination."
"But you fear his power."
"He is not a foe to be taken lightly, nor are his minions," the wizard replied. "But I'm assured that our young Lord Brambleberry there has assembled a capable and potent force, and, well, you have me beside you, after all."
"Then what? What do you mean when you say that you fear the absence of Greeth? What do you know, my friend?"
"I know that Arklem Greeth is the absolute ruler of Luskan. He has established his boundaries."
"Yes, and extended them to pirates running wild along the Sword Coast."
"Not so wild," said Robillard. "And need I remind you that the five high captains who appear to rule Luskan once skirted similar boundaries?"
"Shall we explain to the next shipwrecked and miserable victims we happen across, good and decent folk who just watched family and friends murdered, that the pirates who scuttled them were operating within acceptable boundaries?" asked Deudermont. "Are we to tolerate such injustice and malevolence out of some fear of an unknown future?"
"Things are not always as simple as they seem," Robillard said again. "The Hosttower of the Arcane, the Arcane Brotherhood itself, might not be the most just and deserving rulers of Luskan, but we have seen the result of their rule: Peace in the city, if not in the seas beyond. Are you so confident that without them, Luskan can steer better course?"
"Yes," Deudermont declared. "Yes, indeed."
"I would expect such surety from Brambleberry."
"I have lived my life trying to do right," said Deudermont. "And it's not for fear of any god or goddess, nor of the law and its enforcers. I follow that course because I believe that doing good will bring about good results."
"The wide world is not so easily controlled."
"Indeed, but do you not agree that the better angels of man will win out? The world moves forward to better times, times of peace and justice. It's the nature of humanity."
"But it's not a straight road."
"I grant you that," said Deudermont. "And the twists and turns, the steps backward to strife, are ever facilitated by creatures like Arklem Greeth, by those who hold power but should not. They drive us to darkness when men do nothing, when bravery and honor is in short supply. They are a suffocating pall on the land, and only when brave men lift that pall can the better angels of men stride forward."
"It's a good theory, a goodly philosophy," said Robillard.
"Brave men must act of their heart!" Deudermont declared.
"And of their reason," Robillard warned. "Strides on ice are wisely tempered."
"The bold man reaches the mountaintop!"
Robillard thought, but didn't say, or falls to his death.
"You will fight beside me, beside Lord Brambleberry, against your former brother wizards?"
"Against those who don't willingly come over to us, yes," Robillard answered. "My oath of loyalty is to you, and to Sea Sprite. I have spent too many years saving you from your own foolishness to let you die so ingloriously now."
Deudermont clapped his dearest friend on the shoulder and moved to the rail beside him, leading Robillard's gaze back out to the open sea. "I do fear that you may be right," he conceded. "When we defeat Arklem Greeth and end the pirate scourge, the unintended consequences might include the retirement of Sea Sprite. We'll have nothing left to hunt, after all."
"You know the world better than that. There were pirates before Arklem Greeth, there are pirates in the time of Greeth, and there will be pirates when his name is lost to the ashes of history. Better angels, you say, and on the whole, I believe - or at least I pray - that you are correct. But it's never the whole that troubles us, is it? It's but a tiny piece of humanity who sail the Sword Coast as pirates."
"A tiny piece magnified by the powers of the Hosttower."
"You may well be right," said Robillard. "And you may well be wrong, and that, my friend, is my fear."
Deudermont held fast to the rail and kept his gaze to the horizon, unblinking though the sun had broken through and reflected brilliantly off the rolling waters. It was a good man's place to act for the cause of justice. It was a brave man's place to battle those who would oppress and do harm to helpless innocents. It was a leader's place to act in concert with his principles and trust enough in those principles to believe that they would lead him and those who followed him to a better place.
Those were the things Deudermont believed, and he recited them in his mind as he stared at the brilliant reflections on the waters he loved so dearly. He had lived his life, had shaped his own code of conduct, through his faith in the dictums of a good and brave leader, and they had served him well as he in turn had served so well the people of Luskan, Waterdeep, and Baldur's Gate.
Robillard knew the Hosttower and the ways of the Arcane Brotherhood, and so Deudermont would indeed defer to him on the specifics of their present enemy.
But Captain Deudermont would not shy from the duty he saw before him, not with the opportunity of having eager Lord Brambleberry and his considerable resources sailing beside him.
He had to believe that he was right.
