[Regin Hardhammer]

As evening drew near and the time came for the men to leave, Marreth cast a suspicious glance toward Jynne but spoke to him calmly, “In light of recent events, I shall have to leave you on the ship during my next mission. I can’t work with untrustworthy shipmates in a venture as important as this. You best run your schemes by me before you go kidnapping Elves and putting poison on your blade lest you find yourself in an unpleasant situation. I’ll have the plank ready if you pull something like that again.”

If there was one thing that annoyed Marreth it was a crewmember going over his head. He had not come by his position by accident, and thought that he at least deserved the courtesy of the men keeping him well informed. A ship without a strong Captain was like an eel with its head cut off.

Marreth was also suspicious of Jynne and his poisons in regards to his friend Jarlyn. In Marreth’s view, no one who snuck poison aboard the ship without informing him could be wholly trusted. Although he had no proof, Marreth suspected that Jynne might be slipping something foul into Jarlyn’s food. He found it very unusual for an officer who looked perfectly healthy to suddenly begin vomiting and turn pallid, taking to his bed. Just that afternoon, he had assigned Thomas, one of his most trusted manservants, to prepare the sick man’s food and tend to him in his illness, making sure that no one else came near Jarlyn until he had fully recovered. Just before he left, Marreth asked the ship’s carpenter to borrow his smallest hole borer. Slipping the instrument into his pocket, Marreth promised to return the craftsman’s instrument shortly but gave no explanation as to what he planned to do with it.

Leading the way out of the ship, Marreth and his men marched forward toward the warehouse under the illumination of the full moon. Constructed out of sturdy wood, the warehouse stood firm in the center of the village despite the thrashing it regularly received from the wind and the snow. Entering the building, he thanked Tarn and Nilak for their hard work, and then instructed his crew to hop into the barrels and wait. The boxes and barrels were to be loaded onto smaller ships and ferried out to the Elven vessel where they would be lifted up onto the deck with the aid of a winch.

The two Lossoth had already lightened the barrels by removing some of their contents so the Elves would not grow suspicious of the weight. The crew were already choosing their barrels and preparing to hide, one man in each. Marreth scanned the various type of containers, which were filled with an assortment of things: rope, sail canvas, salt, weapons, and other goods. By the time he had taken his time to decide, all of the barrels had already been taken except for one filled with flower. Marreth grumbled as he lowered himself into it, fully expecting to look like a ghost when he came out. Marreth hoped that none of the crew had taken a pipe with them, especially since someone was likely to be knee deep in tobacco. He sat back and waited for the shipment to move. It was relatively roomy but his sword kept poking him in the side.