With expert skill, Fallan guided the longboat to shore.

"Tomas," Darrick said, "we'll be having that anchor now, quick as you will."

The sailor muscled the stone anchor up from the middle of the longboat, steadied it on the side, then heaved it toward shore. The immense weight fell short of the shore but slapped down into shallow water. Taking up the slack, he dragged the anchor along the river bottom.

"She's stone below," Tomas whispered as the rope jerked in his hands. "Not mud."

"Then let's hope that you catch onto something stout," Darrick replied. He fidgeted in the longboat, anxious to be about the dangerous business they had ahead of them. The sooner into it, the sooner out of it and back aboard Lonesome Star.

"We're about out of riverbank," Maldrin commented as they drifted a few yards farther downriver.

"Could be we'll start the night off with a nice swim, then," Mat replied.

"A man will catch his death of cold in that water," Maldrin grumped.

"Mayhap the pirates will do for you before you wind up abed in your dotage," Mat said. "I'm sure they're not going to give up their prize when we come calling."

Darrick felt a sour twist in his stomach. The «prize» the pirates held was the biggest reason Captain Tollifer had sent Darrick and the other sailors upriver instead of bringing Lonesome Star up.

As a general rule, the pirates who had been preying on the king's ships out of Westmarch had left no one alive. This time, they had left a silk merchant from Lut Gholein clinging to a broken spar large enough to serve as a raft. He'd been instructed to tell the king that one of the royal nephews had been taken captive. A ransom demand, Darrick knew, was sure to follow.

It would be the first contact the pirates had initiatedwith Westmarch. After all these months of successful raids against the king's merchanters, still no one knew how they got their information about the gold shipments. However, they had left only the Lut Gholein man alive, suggesting that they hadn't wanted anyone from Westmarch to escape who might identify them.