“How long?” Deudermont asked the sighting officer, who stood beside the catapult, spyglass in hand.

“We could hit her now with a ball of pitch, mighten be, but getting the chains up high enough to shred her sails…That’ll take another fifty yards closing.”

“One yard for every gust,” Deudermont said with a sigh of feigned resignation. “We need a stronger wizard.”

“You’d be looking for Elminster himself, then,” Robillard shot back. “And he’d probably burn your sails in some demented attempt at a colorful flourish. But please, hire him on. I would enjoy a holiday, and would enjoy more the sight of you swimming back to Luskan.”

This time Deudermont’s sigh was real.

So was Robillard’s grin.

Sea Sprite’s timbers creaked again, forward-leaning masts driving the prow hard against the dark water.

Soon after, everyone on the deck, even the seemingly-dispassionate wizard, waited with breath held for the barked command, “Tack starboard!”

Sea Sprite bent over in a water-swirling hard turn, bending her masts out of the way for the aft catapult to let fly. And let fly she did, the dwarven siege engine screeching and creaking, hurling several hundred pounds of wrapped metal through the air. The chains burst open to near full length as they soared, and whipped in above the deck of Quelch’s Folly, slashing her sails.

As the wounded pirate ship slowed, Sea Sprite tacked hard back to port. A flurry of activity on the pirate’s deck showed her archers preparing for the fight, and Sea Sprite’s crack crew responded in kind, aligning themselves along the port rail, composite bows in hand.

But it was Robillard who, by design, struck first. In addition to constructing the necessary spells to defend against magical attacks, the wizard used an enchanted censer and brought forth a denizen from the Elemental Plane of Air. It appeared like a waterspout, but with hints of a human form, a roiling of air powerful enough to suck up and hold water within it to better define its dimensions. Loyal and obedient because of the ring Robillard wore, the cloudlike pet all but invisibly floated over the rail of Sea Sprite and glided toward Quelch’s Folly.