My friends, even, say that sometimes I have a nasty way with me. This is so. And even if I deplore my manner, it does get things done in moments of crisis. As I went back to the station I had taken on the quarterdeck, Vax gave me a dark look, sullen and defiant.
“You are a right devil, Dak.”
“Yes,” I said, and went off bellowing to a party of men to sort themselves out, with the bowmen in rear, a great pack of famblys, asking to be slaughtered.
Rukker looked back. The gap narrowed.
I yelled at him: “Get your fool hands down! They’ll be shooting any moment.”
As I spoke, the first shafts rose from the two Green swifters.
“Get the ship moving, Fazhan!” I swung about and roared at the two men who had taken the helm positions. “Bring her around to starboard! Put some weight into it!”
Green Magodont’s
wings rose and fell. We could put out only a few oars; but these gave us sufficient way to take us out into midstream. I judged the distances. Arrows struck down about us. The helmsmen looked at me, hard-muscled men, hanging on to their handles, waiting my orders.
“Hard over! Larboard!” I bellowed at Fazhan. “Every effort, Fazhan! Make ’em pull! Speed! Speed!”
The oars beat raggedly and then settled and the swifter’s hard rostrum swirled to larboard and cut through the blue water. We surged ahead, aiming for the starboard quarter of the larboard vessel,
Pearl.
Our stern swung to starboard. We formed a diagonal between the swifters. Arrows crisscrossed now. I saw Nath leap up and swing his cloth about his head, let fly. I had the shrewd suspicion his stone would strike. The swifters neared. Any minute they would strike.
“Ram! Ram! Ram!”
The bull roar bashed up and men tensed for the shock of impact.
We struck.
The bronze ram gouged into
Pearl.
Both vessels shuddered and rocked with the impact. Men were yelling. I bawled out to Rukker; but there was no need. With his knot of Katakis about him, a compact force of devils, he leaped onto the swifter’s deck. Instantly a babble of brilliant fighting ensued. Our stern swerved on, still going.
“Rowed of all!” I screamed at Fazhan. Our oars dropped.
The stern hit.
Somehow I was first across, scrambling over gilding and scrollwork, hurling myself onto the deck of
Vengeance Mortil.
Like a pack of screeching werstings my men followed. The blades flamed and flashed in the light of the twin suns, and then we were at our devil’s tinker work, hammering and bashing, thrusting and slicing.
Vax followed and Duhrra leaped at my side. We swept a space for ourselves and then flung forward; for to stand gaping was to invite feathering.
“Below!” I yelled and men darted off to drop into the stinking gloom of the rowing banks and begin the task of freeing the slaves.
A monstrous man in green and gold fronted me, swirling his longsword.
This kind of work demanded a longsword; but I made shift with the Genodder, dropped him, and with no time to snatch up his sword engaged the next man with a clang. Swords flamed all about me. Men screamed and dropped. The rank raw tang of blood smoked on the morning air.
“Grodno! Grodno!” rang the shrieked battle cries.
“Zair! Zair!” the answering screams ripped out.
Mailed men boiled across the quarterdeck. For the next few murs the mere strength and solidity of packed men would tell. I cursed the damned shortsword, for its premier advantage in the thrust availed little against mailed men, although I gave a couple of fellows sore ribs before I got the point into their faces. I swung the Genodder in a short blurred arc and bashed through a mailed shoulder. A longsword hissed past my ear. It was a case of duck and twist and to the devil with the so-called dignity and art of fighting. I chunked a Fristle’s eye out and slashed back at a Rapa, who spun away, screeching as Rapas do screech. The very fury and frenzy of the fight pushed us back and forth across the deck. But we had men, many men, and soon more swarmed up from below as their chains were struck off.
Vax
The sheer pressure at our backs drove us on. The hideous sounds of mortal combat shocked into the sky. Blood ran greasily across the deck and men coughed or screamed or said nothing as they died. In the press the shortsword proved of value, but I caught a distorted glimpse of Duhrra swinging his longsword and clearing men from his path as a gardener hews weeds. Vax drove on with him. I cursed and beat away a spear-point, thrust short and sharp, and brought the blade back to catch a longsword sweeping down at my head and felt the jar smash along my muscles.
I made a grab with my left hand at the longsword and after one fumble, during which I kicked a fellow in the guts, the longsword was mine. It was a common one with a small hilt; but it would serve. I swapped with a feeling of release.
In the next mur I had leaped after Duhrra and Vax. Together we cut a triple furrow through the Green ranks. Duhrra fought as he always did with a sword, using tremendous sweeps, enormous bashes, and mighty slashings to hew down his opponents. I felt vast relief that he had found and donned a mail shirt, for he left himself dangerously exposed. Vax fought with the trim economy of the trained swordsman. I saw the way he handled his blade and again I wondered if, at his age, he could be a Krozair.
We reached the double doors leading from the quarterdeck into the passage under the poop.
Vengeance Mortil
was a longer vessel than
Green Magodont,
rowing thirty oars to a bank against the latter’s twenty-one. The poop over our heads was now the scene of fighting. We could hear shrieks and the thumps of feet on the deck. Most of the cabins were empty and we tore straight on toward the captain’s cabin.
He was not there, and I recalled the large man I had felled at the instant of boarding. If he had been the captain, then his crew fought well without him. Satisfied that the cabins here were all empty, we turned to dart out and finish the fight. I stopped stock still.
Duhrra and Vax halted in the doorway.
“Come on, Dak!”
A glass case stood against the bulkhead. A shaft of mingled light struck through the aft windows and illuminated the contents of the case. Crimson blazed. A long blade of steel shafted back gleaming light.
“Trophies,” said Duhrra. “Some poor devil of a Zairian—”
I swung the sword at the glass and smashed the case open.
I took the longsword into my fists. It balanced beautifully.
A Krozair longsword. The genuine article. I saw the etched markings, the Kregish letters in flowing script:
KRZI. So
this was a longsword of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. The red cloth was a flag. I ripped it down and swathed it about me. I drew it up tightly between my legs and tucked in the end. I picked up the Krozair longsword.
“Now I’m ready to finish this little lot.”
We belted back down the passage. Our backs were secure. We had only to surge forward along the swifter and take or slay all the Green and the ship would be ours.
A dead marine lay at the corridor entrance. I bent and ripped off his belt and buckled it up about the red flag I used, without blasphemy, in all honor, as a loincloth. We went into the fight like leems. I felt rejuvenated. How ridiculous and petty it must seem that a piece of red cloth could wreak so great a change! But the true change was wrought by the Krozair longsword. The blade flamed. The balance was perfect. I felt the power in my fists and I battled forward, bellowed for my men, and together, yelling, “Zair! Zair!” we catapulted the Greens from the quarterdeck, drove them along the upper gangway. More and more slaves poured up from below, whirling bights of chain.
The uproar continued.
I took time to step back as a Grodnim dropped under the blade, and darted a quick and savage look at
Pearl.
Yes, the fighting there flowed forward, as did the fighting in
Vengeance Mortil.
A
perverse desire grew in me to clear this swifter before Rukker cleared his. I shouted again and roared on, cutting into the last resistance. The Krozair brand sheared through mail where the shortsword would have bounced. We tore into the dying remnants of the resistance and, suddenly, we were on the forecastle with the beakhead lifted, and there were no more adversaries to taste our steel.
The men in the swifter at my back began cheering.
I looked across the gap of water at
Pearl.
Fighting boiled across her forecastle where a knot of men in the green resisted to the end. I saw the Katakis — fewer of them now — battling in the front of the struggle. Rukker was there, a giant figure striking with sword and tail-blade.
Springing onto the bulwark, I put my left hand to my mouth — my right was bloodier than my left — and I lifted up my voice and shouted in right jocular fashion.
“Hai! Rukker! What’s holding you up?”
He heard.
The Kataki devil heard. I saw a Grodnim head fly into the air and Rukker stormed onto the starboard bulwark, springing up to glare across at me.
“We have cleared all! There are no skulkers at our backs!”
“And no slaves to pull the oars, either.”
He didn’t like that.
“We have taken this Takroti-forsaken ship! That is what matters.”
“You may have taken her — but have you slaves to man her?”
“I do not wish to discuss that.”
I heard a gurgling laugh and looked back and there was Vax holding his guts and laughing. Well, it was funny, of course; but I had no desire to be stranded without oar-slaves by that Kataki idiot over there.
Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done
Pearl
too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.
“Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.
I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?
Perhaps.
It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.
“Is
Pearl
seaworthy, after we struck her?”
He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.
In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance — or, rather, men who had been important before they’d been captured — and tried to bash some sense into them. Our own slaves from
Green Magodont
had by this time some idea of what was needful in this situation. Soon all the men of Zair would come to an understanding. For the moment sheer exuberance and wild release of fettered spirits would make of the three swifters hell-holes.
So I will pass quickly over the ensuing scenes. I took myself off back to
Green Magodont
and met Rukker storming back. He looked savagely delighted with his morning’s work. He saw my red breechclout and the sword, and he made a face and began to make some kind of snarling remark; but he did not. His tail quivered and shot erect over his head, the tail-blade gleaming, for he had cleaned it off.
“The ships are ours, Dak. You have served me well. Now I will resume full command.”
The Katakis formed a bunch at his back. He had them well cowed. They were extraordinarily formidable. I hefted the Krozair longsword. I opened my mouth and Vax appeared at my side, laughing, saying, “Give me your sword, Dak, and I will clean it off for you. It is a beautiful blade.”
“I clean my own sword.”
He looked offended.
Rukker bellowed, “Now we carouse and make merry.”
The released slaves would do that, anyway.
Some onker was bellowing that
Pearl
was stuffed with wine. He carried an armful of bottles, waving one above his head, the rich red wine spilling out over him. He was already half-seas over. I did not consider long. Maybe I could have halted the debauch that followed. Maybe not. I did not try. I wanted to talk to Rukker and see if the way I planned to handle the Kataki devil would work.
He had taken a good long look at the three swifters. Fazhan reported that
Pearl
had taken a nasty crack, but that the sharp sheer of her stern had been enough to prevent our ram from driving home, and that she would be fully seaworthy when the planking had been repaired. So Rukker could tell me in his lofty way, “I will take
Vengeance Mortil.
She is the largest. You may have either of the others.”
I said, “Bring a few bottles to the cabin. We can talk there. If you wish to fight, here and now, I shall accommodate you. Otherwise, no fighting until we have decided what to do.”
Now that he had won and was in a strong position, he no doubt thought to show a facade of magnanimity. I do not think I do Rukker an injustice if I say that because he was a Kataki he was, by his religion and customs and mores, what other people would call an evil man. He could not help that; like the scorpion, it was in his nature. But I found that he had a gift denied to most other Katakis. He had a streak of humanity in him that, at first, because I did not believe it possible, I found disconcerting.
“Surely, Dak the High-Handed. We will drink together. But there is no question of our deciding.” He emphasized the “our.” “I have decided what we will do.”
I did not answer but barged off to the cabin, snatching up a couple of the bottles the idiot from
Pearl
had dropped — for he had passed out, beaming idiotically, on my quarterdeck.
My quarterdeck.
Ah! How we arrogate to ourselves, arrogant in our pride!
Nath the Slinger appeared. He wore bits and pieces of finery, and carried a Genodder as well as his sling. He saw Rukker. He started to say something, but Rukker chopped him off.