Having cheated Death, Sterkvark found he was still in Limbo when it came to finding a way out of Northrend.There was not a boat on the water that did not already have a Captain, and the only "watercraft" he could find unattended did not look as if it would last long on the open sea, let alone a few feet from the wharf.
Nor was he eager to tempt fate by trying to take over another pirate ship (and then sail her single handed).
If he was going to return to Southern Seas, he would need to book passage on one of the regular transports, and to do that he would need gold.
He took a job mucking out the Stables of Augeas, but found that Northrend livestock were prodigious dung producers...
They were always looking for lumberjacks in the Grizzly Hills who still had all their limbs, but a mishap with an axe left him one step away from a peg leg...
Finally, he made his way to the Argent Tournament, and because none of the factions were taking on freebooters as valiants, he decided to joust for the dubious honor of the Booty Bay Bruisers...
He performed brilliantly...too well, in fact, for as Champions of Stormwind and Ironforge fell like a barometer in a typhoon, he soon came to the attention of the authorities, who seized him as an undesirable and sentenced him to hard labor in the Saronite mines. But Sterkvark was through with manual labor, and just as they were shackling him to a chain gang, Sterkvark burst free of his guards and dashed for a nearby unattended vessel. He cast off the bowlines and laughed as the ship pulled away from the dock....
...and then to his astonishment rose straight up into the air!
As he drifted out over the icy sea,
Sterkvark though his luck was finally looking up. This was a sturdy craft, as smooth a ride as Goblin Engineering could make her.
He even liked the name of the airship: "Hindenberg" had a lucky ring to it...
(To be continued...)
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