Glen Cook - Call For The Dead

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Glen Cook wrote "The Quiet Sea" (December 1978) and "Ghost Stalk" (May 1978); he is the author of
two fantasy trilogies, DREAD EMPIRE, from Berkley, and THE STAR'S END TRILOGY, forthcoming from
Avon. Here is another fine story about the crew of the Vengeful Dragon.
Call For The Dead
BY
GLEN COOK
I
The figure wore scarlet.
It had a small, hairless skull. Its face was as delicate as that of a beautiful woman. A rouge
colored its lips. Kohl shadowed its eyes. Zodiacal pendants hung from its earlobes. Yet no
observer could have sworn to its sex.
Its eyes were dosed. Its mouth was open.
It sang.
Its song was terror. It was evil. Its voice stunk with its own fear.
Its lips did not move while the words came forth.
A dark basaltic throne served as its chair. A pentagram marked the floor surrounding it. That
Stygian surface seemed to slope away into infinity. The arms of the pentagram, and the cabalistic
signs filling them, had been sketched in brilliant reds and blues,
yellows and greens. The colors rippled and changed to the tempo of the song. They surrendered to
momentary flashes of silver, lilac, and gold.
Perspiration dribbled down the satin-smooth effeminate face. Veins stood out darkly at its
temples. Neck and shoulder muscles became knots and cords. Small, slim, delicate hands clawed at
the arms of the throne. The fingernails were long, curved, sharp, and painted the color of the
fresh blood.
Torches surmounting the throne's tall back flickered, growing weaker and weaker.
The song faltered....
The figure surged, drew upon some final bastion of inner resource. A scream ripped from its
throat.
The darkness gradually withdrew.
The figure slowly stood, arms rising, its song/scream transmuted into a cry of triumph.
Its eyes opened. They were an incredible cerulean blue, almost shining. And they were incalculably
malevolent.
Then the darkness struck. A finger came from behind, swiftly, coiling round its victim like a
python of night. Tendrils of the tentacle thrust into the sorcerer's nostrils and open mouth.
II
The caravel revolved slowly in an inperceptible current. The sea was cool and quiet, a plain of
polished jade. Neither fin nor wind rippled its lifeless surface. It looked as unyielding as a
serpentine floor.
I stared as I had for ages. It was there, but I no longer saw it.
Fog domed the place where Vengeful Dragon lay becalmed. It made granite walls where it met the
quiet sea, but overhead it thinned. Daylight leaked through.
How many times had the sun come and gone since the gods had abandoned us to the spite of that
Itaskian sorcerer? I had not counted.
Sometimes, when I tried hard enough, I drifted away from my body. Not far. The spells that bound
us were of the highest order.
It pleased me that I had slain the spellcaster. If ever I escaped this pocket hell and encountered
him in the afterworld, I would attack him again.
I could get free just enough to survey the scabby remnants of my drifting coffin.
Emerald moss clung to her sides. It crept a foot up from her waterline. Colorful fungi gnawed at
her rotting timbers. Her rigging dangled like strands of a broken spider's web. Her sails were
tatters. Their canvas was old and brittle and would crumble at the first caress of wind.
The decks were littered with fallen men.
Arrows protruded from backs and chests. Limbs lay twisted at odd, painful angles. Bowels lay
spilled upon the slimy planks. Gaping wounds marked every body, including mine.
Yet there was no blood. Nor any corruption.
Not of the biological kind. Morally, Dragon had been the cesspool of the world.
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Sixty-seven pairs of eyes stared at the grey walls of our tiny, changeless universe.
Twelve black birds perched in the savaged tops. They were as dark as the bottom of a freshly
filled grave. There was no sheen to their feathers. Only the movement of their pupilless eyes
betrayed their claim to life.
They knew neither impatience, nor hunger, nor boredom. They were sentinels standing guard over the
resting place of old evil.
They watched the ship of the dead. They would do so forever.
They had arrived the moment our fate had overtaken us.
Suddenly, as one, twelve heads jerked. Yellow eyes peered into the thinner fog overhead. One short
screech filled the heavy air. Dark pinions drummed a frightened bass tattoo. The birds fled
clumsily into the granite fog.
I had never seen them fly. Never.
A shadow, as of vast wings, occluded the sky without actually blocking the light.
I suffered my first spate of emotion in ages. It was pure terror.
III
The caravel no longer revolved. Its battered prow pointed an erring north-northeast. A tiny swale
of jade bowed around her cutwater. A shallow depression bordered her stern.
Vengeful D. was moving.
Dark avians wheeled round her splintered masts, retreated in consternation.
Our captain lay on the caravel's high poop, beneath the helm, clad in rags. Once they had been
noble finery. He still clutched a broken sword. He was Colgrave, the mad pirate.
Not all Colgrave's wounds had come in our last battle. One leg had been crippled for years. Half
his face had been so badly burned that a knoll of bone lay exposed on his left cheek.
Colgrave had been the worst of us. He had been the crudest, the most wicked of men.
Our fell commander had collapsed atop several men. His eyes still stared in fiery hatred, burning
like the lamps of Hell. For Colgrave, Death was a temporary lover. A woman he would betray when
his time came.
Colgrave was convinced of his immortality, of his mission.
Stretched on the high forecastle deck, in rags as dark as the loss of hope, lay another man. A
blue and white arrow protruded from his chest. His head and shoulders lay propped against the
vessel's side. His hating eyes stared through a break in the railing opposite him. His face was
shadowed by ghosts of madness.
He was me.
I hardly recognized him anymore. He seemed more alien than any of my shipmates.
I remembered him as a grinning young soldier, a cheerful boy, a hero of the El Murid Wars. He had
been the kind you wanted your daughters to meet. That man on the forecastle deck, beyond his
obvious injuries, had wounds to the bones of his soul. Their scars could be seen by anyone. He
looked like he had endured centuries of hurt.
He had dealt more than he had received in his thirty-four years.
He was hard, bitter, petty, vicious. I could see it, know it, and admit it when looking at him
from my drifting place amidst the rigging. I could not from inside.
He was not unique. His shipmates were all hating, soulcrippled men. They hated one another more
than anything else. Except themselves.
A seven-legged spider limped down my right shoulder, across my throat, and out along my left arm.
The arachnid was the last living creature aboard Dragon. She was weakening in her relentless quest
for one more victim.
The spider's odyssey took her out onto the pale white of a hand still gripping a powerful bow. My
bowstring had parted long ago, victim of rot and irresistible tension.
I felt her...! My skin twitched beneath her feet.
The spider scuttled into a crack between planks and observed with cold, hungry eyes.
My eyes itched. I blinked. Colgrave shuddered. One spindly arm rose deliberately. Colorless
fingers brushed the helm. Then his hand fell, stirred feebly in the slime covering the deck.
I tried moving. I could not. What a will Colgrave had!
It had driven us for years, compelling us when no other force in Heaven or Hell could move us.
A shadow with saffron eyes wheeled above us. It uttered short, sharp cries of dismay.
Tendrils of the darkness that could not be seen were weaving new evils on the loom of wickedness
of our accursed ship. And the watchers could do nothing. The sorcerer who had summoned them, who
had commanded them and who had charged them with watching and bearing tidings, was no more.
I had silenced his magical songs forever with a last desperate shaft from my bow.
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The birds could fly to no one with their fearful news. Nor could anyone liberate them from their
bondage.
One by one my shipmates stirred the slightest, then returned to their long rests.
Sometimes in darkness, sometimes in light, the caravel glided northward. The shadowweaver ran its
shuttle to and fro. No foul weather came to gnaw on our ragged floating Hell. The fog surrounding
us neither advanced nor receded, nor did the water we sailed ever change. It always resembled
polished jade.
My shipmates did not move again.
Then darkness descended upon me, the oblivion for which I had longed since my realization that
Vengeful Dragon was not just another pirate, but a seagoing purgatory manned by the blackest souls
of the western world....
And while I slept in the embrace of the Dark Lady, the weaver weaved. The ship changed. So did her
crew. And the watchbirds followed in dismay.
IV
A dense fog gently bumped Itaskia's South Coast. It did not cross the shoreline. The light
of a three-quarters moon gleamed off its lowlying upper surface. It looked like an army of
woolballs come to besiege the land.
A ship's main truck and a single spar cut the fog's surface like a shark's fin, moving north.
The moon set. The sun rose. The fog dissipated gradually, revealing a pretty caravel. She had a
new but plain look, like a miser's beautiful wife cloaked in homespun.
The fog dwindled to a single irreducible cloud. That refused to disperse. It drifted round the
ship's decks. Black birds dipped in and out.
I began to itch all over. My skin twitched. Awareness returned. Straining, I opened my eyes.
The sun blazed in. I decided to roll over instead.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done. A physical prodigy.
Battered old Colgrave staggered to his feet. He leaned on the helm and scanned the gentle sea. He
wore a bewildered frown.
Here, there, my shipmates stirred. Who would the survivors be? Barley, the deadly coward? Priest,
the obnoxious religious hypocrite? The Kid, whose young soul had been blackened by more murders
than most of us older men? My almost-friend, Little Mica, whose sins I had never discovered? Lank
Tor? Toke? Fat Poppo? The Trolledyngjan? There were not many I would miss if they did not make it.
I climbed my bow like a pole. I could feel the expression graven on my face. It was wonder. It
tingled through me right down to my toenails.
We had no business being anywhere but perpetually buried in that sorcerer's trap.
I scanned the horizon suspiciously, checked the maindeck, then met my Captain's eyes. There was no
love between us, but we respected one another. We were the best at what we were.
He shrugged. He, too, was ignorant of what was happening.
I had wondered if he had not brought the resurrection about by sheer force of will.
I bent and collected an oiled leather case. Inside lay twelve arrows labeled with colored bands,
and several new bowstrings. My bow, which had been exposed for so long, had been restored by
careful oiling and rubbing. I strung and tested it. It remained as powerful as ever. I did not
then have the strength to bend it completely.
A dozen men were afoot. They searched themselves for wounds that had disappeared during the
darkness. I wondered how many had shared my vigil of impotent awareness, denied even the escape of
madness.
They started checking each other. I looked for Mica. I spotted the little guy studying himself in
a copper mirror. He ran fingers over a face that had been half torn away. Everyone was recovering.
I descended to the maindeck and strolled aft. Dragon was in the best shape I had ever seen. She
had been renewed...
I walked stiffly. The others moved jerkily, like marionettes manipulated by a novice. I reached
the ladder to the poop as vanguard of a committee. Our First Officer and Boatswain, Toke and Lank
Tor, had joined me. Old Barley tagged along, hoping the Old Man would order a ration of rum.
Barley was one of the alcoholic in group. Priest was another. He was watching Barley closely.
Barley always did the doling.
Rum! My mouth watered. Only Priest could outdrink me.
Colgrave shooed his deck watch down the starboard ladder.
Why hadn't our mysterious benefactors done a full repair job on the Captain? I looked round.
Several men had not been restored completely. We were as we had been the day we had stumbled into
the Itaskian sorcerer's trap.
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Colgrave was first to speak. He said, "Something's happened." Not an ingenious deduction.
My response was no more brilliant. "We've been called back."
Colgrave's voice had a remote, sephulcral timbre. It seemed to reach us after a journey up a long,
cold, furniture-crowded hallway. There was no force in it. It had no volume, and very little
inflection.
"Tell me something I don't know,
Bowman," Colgrave growled.
The lack of love between us was not unique. This crew had shipped together, and fought together,
by condemnation of the gods. We cooperated only because survival demanded it.
"Who did? Why?" I demanded. Again I scanned the horizons.
I was not a lone watcher. We had powerful enemies along these coasts. Dread enemies, they had at
their disposal the aid of men like the one who had banished us to that enchanted sea.
"We don't have time to worry about it." Colgrave threw a spidery hand at the coast. "That's
Itaskia, gentlemen. We're only eight leagues south of the Silverbind Estuary."
The Itaskian Navy had sent that sorcerer after us. Itaskians hated us. Especially Itaskian
merchants. We had plundered them so often that we used gold and silver for ballast.
We had preyed on them for ages, slaughtering their crews and burning their ships during our
relentless search for what, in the end, had proven to be ourselves.
The great naval base at Portsmouth lay just inside the mouth of the, estuary.
"Coast watchers have spotted us by now," Colgrave continued. "The news will have reached
Portsmouth. The fleet will be coming out."
It did not occur to us that we could have been forgotten. Or that we might not be recognized. But
we did not know how long we had been gone, nor did Dragon look the same.
"We better get this bastard headed out to sea," Tor said. "Head for the nether coast of Freyland.
Hole up in a cove till we know what's happening." Some timbre entered the Boatswain's voice. It
smelled of fear.
We had never been well known in the island kingdoms. Seldom had we plundered there.
"We'll do that. Meantime, check out this tub from stem to stern. Check the men. Tor, take a look
round from the tops. They could be after us already."
Tor had the best eyes of any man I've ever known.
The crew milled below, touching each other, speculating in soft tones. Their voices, too, sounded
remote. I do not know why that was. It soon corrected itself.
"First watch," Tor called. "Rigging. Prepare to shift sail for the seaward tack."
They moved slowly, stiffly, but sorted themselves out. Some clambered into the rigging. Lank Tor
said, "Ready to shift course, Captain."
Colgrave spun the wheel. Tor bellowed to the topmen.
Nothing happened.
Colgrave tried again. And again. But Vengeful D. would not respond.
We just stood round staring at one another till Kid called down, "Sail ho!"
V
"Boatswain, see to the weapons," Colgrave ordered.
I looked at him narrowly. A fire was building within him. Action imminent. The old Colgrave flared
through, despite what we had endured, despite what we had learned about ourselves. "See that sand
is scattered on the decks. Barley! One cup for all hands. Bowman. Take yours first. Go to the
forecastle."
Our gazes locked. I had had my fill of killing. At least for this madman.
But the compulsion was still there. The fire that forced a man to adapt his will to Colgrave's. I
looked down like a kid who had just been scolded. I descended to the maindeck.
Mica caught up with me. "Bow-man. What's going on? What happened to us?"
He called me Bowman because he did not know my name. None of them did, unless Colgrave had
penetrated the secret. It was one I could no longer answer myself.
Vengeful Dragon had a way of stealing memories. I could not remember coming aboard. I did remember
murdering my wife and her lovers before I did. But what was her name...?
The curse of the gods lies heavy. To remember my crime, to remember the love and hate and pain
that had gone into and pursued it, and yet to forget the very name of the woman I had killed....
And, worse, to have forgotten my own, so that the very cornerstone of my identity was denied
me.... They award their penalties in cruel and ingenious ways, do the gods.
Some of the others remembered their names but had forgotten why they had committed their sins.
That, too, was torture.
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None of us remembered much of our life aboard Vengeful Dragon.
Colgrave and I had the murder of our families in common. That was not much of a foundation for
friendship.
"I don't know, Mica. No more than you."
"I thought maybe the Old Man.... It scares me, Bowman. To be recalled...."
"I know. Think of the Power involved. The evils unleashed.... Come on up to the forecastle with
me,.Mica." He did not have anything else to do. He was our sailmaker. Our sails were in chandler's
shop condition.
We leaned against the rail, staring over the quiet green water at the tops of a pair of triangular
sails.
"That's no Itaskian galleon," Mica observed.
"No." I debated for several seconds before I hinted at my suspicion. "Maybe the gods are tinkering
with us, Mica." A gull glided across our bows. For a moment I marveled at its graceful flight. A
shadow followed. One of the black birds.
"Suppose they're giving us another chance?"
He watched the black bird for several seconds. "How patient are they, Bowman? We had our chances
in life. We had them in limbo, while we harried the coasts. And we didn't even recognize them."
"And maybe we couldn't. This ship.... We forget things. We stop thinking. We get like Lank Tor,
who can't remember yesterday. Remember Student and Whaleboats?"
They had been friends of ours. They had disappeared during a terrible storm shortly before the
sorcerer had caught us. "Uhm."
We had never talked about it, but the suspicion could not be denied. There was a chance that
Student and Whaleboats had found redemption. There was a connection between righteous deeds and
disappearances from Dragon.
It had to be more than coincidence, Our memories were reliable only back to the time Kid had come
aboard, but since then several men had vanished. Each had been guilty of doing something truly
good shortly before. How Colgrave had screamed and cussed at Student and Whaleboats for not
setting fire to that shipload of women....
"Student claimed there was a way out. Fat Poppo told me he figured it out too. I think there is. I
think they found it. And I think I know what it is too, now." Mica did not say anything for at
least a minute. Then, "Did you die in that place, Bowman?"
"What?" For some reason I did not want to tell him. "What place?"
"The foggy sea, dummy. Where we met ourselves and lost the battle."
Colgrave's habit was to destroy every vessel we encountered. We had entered that quiet place out
of a deep fog, with a sorcerer's grim promise still ringing in our ears. Black birds had roosted
in our tops and another ship had been headed our way. Colgrave, mad Colgrave, had ordered the
attack. And when we had come to grips with the caravel, who had we found manning her but
doppelgangers of ourselves....?
"Were you aware the whole time?"
"Yeah." The grunt like to choked me getting out. "Every damned second. I couldn't sleep. I
couldn't even go crazy."
He raised an eyebrow.
"All right. Crazier than I already am."
Mica grinned. "Sometimes, Bow-man, I wonder if we're not just a little less wicked than we think.
Or maybe it's pretend. We're great pretenders, the crew of the Vengeful D."
"Mica, you ain't no philosopher."
"How do you know what I am? I don't. I don't remember. But what I'm saying, man, is I think we all
knew what was going on. Every minute. Even the Old Man."
"What's the point?"
"The sun rose and set a lot of times, Bowman. I didn't sleep either. That's a lot of time to
think. And maybe change."
I turned my back to the rail. The crew were about ship's work. They were quieter than I
remembered. Thoughtful. They moved less jerkily now.
How long had it been? Years?
"We don't look any different." Colgrave was the same old specter of terror there on the poop. He
had changed clothing. He was clad in regal finery now. Clothes were his compensation for his
deformity.
When he dressed this well, and kept the poop instead of lurking in his cabin, he meant to spill
blood.
"I mean different inside." He considered Colgrave too. "Maybe some of us can't change. Maybe
there's nothing else in there."
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"Or maybe we just don't understand." I suffered an insight. "The Old Man's scared."
"He should be. These are Itaskian waters. Look what they did already."
"Not just afraid of what they'll do if they catch us. We had that hanging over us before. It
didn't bother anybody. Won't now. I mean scared like Barley. Of everything and nothing."
Old Barley was our resident coward. He was also the meanest fighter on the Vengeful D. His fear
drove him to prodigies in battle.
"Maybe. And maybe he's changed too."
"I haven't. Not that I can see."
"Look at your right hand."
I did. It was my hand, fore and middle fingers calloused from drawing bowstrings. "So?"
"Every guy here can tell you two things about your hands. If there's a ship in sight, your left
will be holding a bow. And so it is. And your right, when Colgrave lets you, will be hanging on to
a cup of rum like it was your firstborn child."
I looked at Mica. He smiled. I looked at my hand. It was naked. I looked down at the maindeck,
that I had crossed without thinking of rum. Barley was almost finished issuing the grog ration.
The craving hit me hard. I must have staggered. Mica caught my arm. "Try to let it go, Bowman.
Just this once."
I waved at Barley. "Just to see if you can do it." Why didn't he mind his own business? Gods, I
needed a drink.
Then Priest caught my eye. Priest, the king of us alkies. The man who peddled salvation to the
rest of us and remained incapable of saving himself. Priest did not have a tin cup either. He
leaned over the starboard rail. His expression said that his guts were tearing him apart. His need
for a drink was devouring him. But he was not drinking. His back was to Barley.
"Look at Priest," I murmured.
"I see him, Bowman. And I see you."
The cramps started then. They pissed me off. I whirled and planted myself
against the rail, mimicking Priest, overlooking the bowsprit. I tried to shut out the world.
"No way that pervert is going to outlast me," I declared.
Our bow began rising and falling gently. The water was assuming the character of a normal sea. Our
resurrection was about finished.
I did not look forward to its completion. I could get seasick in a rowboat on a lake on a breezy
day.
The other vessel was hull up on the horizon and headed our way fast.
I reexamined my bow and arrows. Just in case.
VI
Had we changed? The gods witness, we had. The two-master came in alongside, gently, and we did not
swarm over her. We did not cast her screaming crew to the sharks. We did not set her aflame. We
did not do any thing but hold our weapons ready and wait. Colgrave did not ask us to do anything
more.
Mica and I surveyed our shipmates. I'm sure he saw as much wonder in my face as I saw in his.
We watched Colgrave almost constantly. The Old Man would determine the smaller vessel's fate. Like
it or not, if he gave the order, we would attack.
"We're a pack of war dogs," I told: Mica. "We might as well be slaves." He nodded.
Never a word escaped our mad captain's mouth. That astonished him more than the rest of us, I
think.
The ship lay bumping against Dragon for fifteen minutes. Her strangely clad, silent crewmen
studied us. We studied them. Not a one would meet my eye. They knew who and what we were. We could
smell the fear in them.
Yet they had come to us, and they stayed. And that was reason for us to fear.
The vessel had a small deckhouse amidships. Its door finally opened. Two more strangers stepped
out, stationed themselves to either side. They studied us with startled, frightened eyes.
A person in red came forth, looked up.
"A woman!" Mica swore.
We did not have a reputation for being gallant.
"I don't think so...." But I could not be sure. I had never seen a bald woman. "But.... Call it an
it."
Its incredible blue eyes stared in slight bewilderment. Unlike its shipmates, it did not fear us.
It was confident.
I got the impression that we had been a disappointment. Because we had not conformed to our
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vicious reputation.
The urge to let an arrow fly was as strong in me as the need for a drink. I did not bend my bow.
One glance into those weird eyes was all I could handle. Incredible Power sparked them. They
proclaimed their possessor a sorcerer greater than he who had banished us to fogs and leaden seas.
The creature also had that aura of command that animated Colgrave.
"This's the one who called us back," I whispered.
Mica nodded.
I had myself in control. I tested the draw of my bow.
Black birds wheeled overhead, screeching their consternation. One dove at the figure in red.
The figure raised a palm. It spoke a single word.
Feathers exploded. They spun down toward ships and sea, smoldering as they fell. The stench of
burnt feathers assailed the air.
The naked albatross smashed into Dragon's side. It broke its, neck. It thrashed in the water
briefly, then changed form. In seconds it became a thing like a snake of night. The thing wriggled
away through water and air with lightning speed.
Its companions screeched once, then remained silent. They did not cease their endless patrol. They
clearly prefered avoiding their comrade's liberation.
The figure in red said something.
Someone shouted orders in a strange language. Sailors threw grappling hooks over Dragon's rail.
I looked at Colgrave. An arrow lay across my bow.
He made a slight negative head gesture.
"He has changed," I told Mica. "He says let them come." I looked again. Colgrave was instructing
Toke and Lank Tor. They descended to the maindeck.
They disposed the men in such fashion that they could attack the boarders from all sides. We
waited.
One of the smaller ship's officers came up. He looked round, saw the lay of things. He was not
happy. He glanced at me. I half drew my bow. He cringed.
I laughed. Old Barley giggled. The crew took it up.
We were not kind people. We enjoyed tormenting our captives.
Again Colgrave gave me that little headshake. A nasty grin smeared his face too. He liked my joke.
More of them came. And more, and more.
"Mica, they're all coming over." "Looks like."
They stood on the maindeck, nervously watched Colgrave.
"Slide back and tell the Old Man we can sneak down and knock a hole in their bottom when they're
all up here. If he wants."
Mica grinned. "Yeah." It was his kind of dirty trick. He liked sneaking. I expect his sins
involved some fancy sneakiness. He wasn't chicken, mind. Just the kind of guy who sees the
advantages of backstabbing. A low-risk type guy. He could handle himself face-to-face, when the
stakes were high. He shoved through the strangers. They twisted away from him like he was a plague
carrier.
I watched a grin spread across Colgrave's battered face. It was as lopsided as the altars of Hell.
The muscles only worked on one side.
He liked it. My suggestion did not violate his inexplicable armistice with the creature in red.
Mica almost danced back to the forecastle.
The sorcerer boarded last. Its crew surrounded it. It disappeared among them. They were all
bigger.
I laughed, catching the creature's attention. I again half drew my bow.
It looked at me with no apparent fear, but I knew better. I knew I could take the sorcerer if just
one instant's gap opened through those bodyguards. We had not been stripped of our defenses. I
could get an arrow from here to there quicker than the creature could blink.
It knew too. That was why it had brought its whole crew. In the time it would take us to kill
them, it could perform the sorceries needed to save itself.
It, too, concentrated on Colgrave. The Old Man's eye flicked my way just once, for a tenth of a
second.
Mica and I rolled over the rail into the ratlines, transferred to the other vessel's stays, got
down to her deck in seconds.
"Bowman, you see about sinking her. I'll go through the cabin."
"Good thinking. But look for something besides loose gold."
He gave me a look.
I looked back. Gold was Mica's weakness. Whenever we took a ship, he spent most of the victory
celebration scrounging gold and silver. He brought it back, and we took it down and put it in
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook/Cook,%20Glen%20-%20Call%20For%20The%20Dead.txt (7 of 23) [2/9/2004 3:25:37 AM]
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file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook/Cook,%20Glen%20-%20Call%20For%20The%20Dead.tx GlenCookwrote"TheQuietSea"...

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