Guardsman Of Gor

Chapter 5 — I SEE THE _TAMIRA_; I CONSIDER THE _TUKA_

I kicked back, screaming, the face that thrust itself over the gunnels. With the blade I slashed down, cutting the rope taut on the grappling hook caught over the wood. I thrust twice, driving back pirates.

One of my feet was on the _Tina_. The other was on the railing of the pirate vessel. Others, too, stood between the ships. Others stood on the decks of their own vessels, thrusting and cutting, stabbing, over the bulwarks. Men on the _Tina_, using loose oars as levers, were trying to pry the ships apart.

There was a screaming of metal as shearing blades, locked together, protested the stresses imposed upon them by the shifting ships. The port shearing blade of the pirate vessel was torn, splintering strakes, from its hull. Our starboard shearing blade, that great crescent of iron, some seven feet in height, some five inches in width, was bent oddly askew. It had been turned like tin.

A man next to me fell, reaching out, clutching, grasping, between the ships. He screamed. Then he was lost among the splinters of oars and the grinding of the hulls. The bowman, below me on the deck, and to my left, unleashed an arrow, at point-blank range across the gunnels. I could not follow its flight. Only the blood at the pirate's throat marked its passage. The shaft itself was lost somewhere behind, among the screaming men.

I leaped onto the deck of the pirate vessel, slashing about myself. A spear thrust from behind tore through the side of my tunic. I twisted away, hacking passage. Then pirates thrust forward and I felt them sweeping about me. They pressed toward the rail. I turned. They did not even realize, in the heat of battle, in the confusion, that I was not of their number.

I nearly struck, by accident, an oarsman from the _Tina_, too on the pirate's vessel. As pirates swarmed toward our ship we cut at the backs of their necks. I saw the fellow I had nearly struck board the _Tina_, literally with the pirates. He struck a defender's pike away from himself. Then he cut at the pirates to his left and right. Then he was again on the deck of the _Tina_. Then he had turned and was fighting the pirates.

I heard timbers creak. Pirates were at the stern castle of the _Tina_. We had ten or more men fighting on the pirate vessel in the vicinity of her stem castle. I cut two more of the ropes attached to grappling hooks. "Rogue!" cried a fellow. I turned to face him. We crossed swords five times. His blood was on me. With two hands, grunting, I jerked the sword from his body. Ribbing snapped. It had been a clumsy stroke. Callimachus would not have been pleased.

I lifted my head, wildly. The ships were now drifting apart. They were held close only at the sterns. I smelled fire. I saw a man on the _Tina_ plunge backward, his hands clutching at an arrow protruding from his forehead. In two steps I climbed the archer's platform and leaped behind the blind. I passed my blade into the fellow's body, and he fell, turning, from the platform, arrows spilling, like rattling sticks, to the deck. A pirate leaped toward me and I cut him from the platform. Arrows sped toward me, two of them, and caught, tearing, in the wicker. Behind me I could see another pirate vessel looming. Near the stem castle I saw some of my fellows cutting through pirates. Burning pitch flamed upon the deck.

"This way, Lads!" I called, leaping down from the archer's platform. An arrow struck into the deck at my feet.

We sped down the deck. The ship shuddered as the great catapult loosed a stone which shattered into the rowing frame on the port side of the _Tina_.

In moments I and the others, now some seven men, cutting at pirates, severing ropes, separated the two vessels and, as they slipped loose of one another, leaped onto the stern of the _Tina_, falling upon the pirates who had boarded her there.

The pirates, pressed by our defenders, and attacked now from their own vessel, fought for their lives. We forced them to the railing, and over it, those who were not cut down, into the Vosk.

"Are there no more?" I inquired.

"Are you disappointed?" asked a man.

"Our decks are cleared of the sleen," said a man.

"They fought well," said a man.

"They are men of the Voskjard," said another.

Our deck was run with blood. It was splintered. Arrows protruded from it. The port rowing frame was half struck away. Damage had already been incurred by our stern castle in an earlier engagement. Our starboard shearing blade was awry.

We sought our men in the water, throwing them ropes. "Aiii!" I cried.

"What is it?" asked a man.

"That ship," I said, pointing, to a vessel less than some hundred yards away, engaged in war. "That is the _Tamira_!"

This legend was emblazoned on her starboard bow. Doubtless it appeared, as well, on her port bow. The same legend also appeared on her stern. Gorean merchantmen are often identified at these three points.

"So what of it?" asked a man.

"She is not our ship," said another.

"She flies the pennons of the Voskjard," said another.

"She is the ship which, in the Vosk, east of the chain, with the _Telia_, captained by Sirnak, of the men of Policrates, took the _Flower of Siba_!" These things I had learned while held captive in the holding of Policrates.

"What of it?" asked a man.

"She is captained by Reginald, in the fee of Ragnar Voskjard," I cried. "She is the scout ship of Ragnar Voskjard."

"What of it?" asked a man.

"She came to clear the way for the passage of the Voskjard east," I said. "But," I said, anxiously, "was the rendezvous with the Voskjard's fleet at his holding or was it in the river?"

"What difference does it make?" asked a man. He threw a rope to one of our fellows, struggling in the water.

"Perhaps no difference," I said. "Perhaps no difference."

"Would you engage her?" laughed a man.

"She is supported by heavy galleys," said another man.

"That she is!" I said, elated.

"That pleases you?" asked a man.

"It suggests to me that the rendezvous was, indeed, made in the river, and not at the Voskjard's holding."

"Is that good?" asked a man.

"It could be splendid," I said. "But, too, it might make no difference."

"You are mad," laughed a man.

We then heard again battle horns. Swiftly I gave my aid to drawing two more men from the water. They were survivors from the _Claudia_, she of Point Alfred.

Fifty yards astern we saw the jury-rigged ram of the _Sita_, a converted merchantman of Jort's Ferry, take a ship of the Voskjard in the stern.

"To the benches!" called an officer. I, too, ran to the benches and seized an oar.

Behind us we heard the rending of strakes. The _Sita_ herself, extricating herself from her victim, sluggish, half-listing, under-oared, was stove in on the port and starboard sides by ramships of the Voskjard.

"Where are the ships of Callisthenes!" cried a man.

"Stroke! Stroke!" called the oar master.

"To starboard, hard to starboard!" cried an officer.

The helmsmen thrust against the tillers.

"Oars inboard!" cried the oar master. The great levers, scraping, were hauled inboard.

A ramship of the Voskjard, her ram missing our port bow by inches slid rapidly past. Arrows struck solidly into the rowing frame.

We heard oars of the enemy snapping against our hull. Then there was a crash and tearing astern as our port rudder was torn away.

"Oars outboard!" called the oar master, and we slid the wood through the thole ports.

The _Daphne_ of Port Cos was in flames. The _Andromache_ and _Aspasia_ had already gone down.

Abeam on the starboard side we saw a ship bearing down upon us and then, suddenly, though it could have smote us, it veered away.

"It is a ship of the Voskjard!" cried a man.

"No!" said another. "It flies the pennons of Ar's Station!"

"Ar's Station has no such ships," cried a man.

"It did not strike us!" a fellow pointed out.

As the ship slipped past we saw, indeed, that it bristled with the helmets of Ar's Station.

"How can it be?" asked a man.

"It is reinforcements!" cried a man, elatedly.

"No!" said a man. "That is not a ship of Ar's Station. They do not have such ships. It is a ship of the Voskjard! It has been taken as a prize!"

"How could that be?" asked a man. "Ar's Station is unskilled upon the river. Their ships are undermanned!"

To be sure we had noted, earlier, the wreckage of at least four of the ships of Ar's Station, including two of her heavy, class galleys, the _Tullia_ and the _Publia_. It seemed to me not unlikely that others of her galleys, as well, might by now have met a similar fate. It was not clear to me why Ar's Station had resorted to such vessels as she had. They were too squat and sluggish; their holds were too large; their lines were clumsy; they were too slow, too unresponsive to their helms; they seemed little other than fat merchantmen, fit less for war than for the placid transportation of weighty cargoes. Did Ar's Station truly think to match such swollen, ponderous freighters against the swift, sleek menace of the Voskjard's warships? And to aggravate the situation the ships of Ar's Station seemed undermanned. What luscious fruit they must seem for picking. How attractive, how inviting, they must appear to the predators of the Voskjard!

A mighty rock, then, suddenly, not more than ten feet from my bench, plummeted through our deck, splintering the wood upward, exploding it upward, in a shower of sharpened fragments. We had not even seen from whence the stone came. A looping bowl of flaming pitch traced its trajectory off our starboard bow and fell into the water.

"Stroke!" called the oar master.

We began to nose our way among flaming and shattered ships.

Our benches vibrated as our own major catapult hurled a stone skyward.

The smell of burning pitch was in the air. I heard men crying out in the water.

"We must seek our sister ships, to stand with them!" called the oar master. "It is thus that Callimachus commands!"

"The _Portia_ is off the starboard bow!" called an officer. "She is sorely beset!"

"Two ships approach her!" cried another man. "They will draw alongside of her! She is to be boarded and taken!"

"To the rescue of the _Portia_!" cried the officer on the stem castle. "Two points to starboard! Stroke!"

"Stroke!" called the oar master.

"Hold! Back oars!" cried the oar master, miserably. "Steady!" he called to the two helmsmen, now at a single tiller.

In the distance involved, at full strike, with the lost port rudder, we could not have come about in time to attain the attack course.

"Now, stroke!" called the oar master.

"Hold!" called the officer, miserably.

"Hold, hold!" cried the oar master.

In the delay a ship of the Voskjard had interposed herself between us and the _Portia_, Our rams, separated by some fifty yards, faced one another. We backed slowly away. No longer was the _Tina_ alert to her helms. Even low and shallow drafted she could no longer veer in a matter of yards. She had been designed for a double-helm system. The port rudder was now gone. Additional open water was now required in which she might maneuver. The ship of the Voskjard lay to. She did not attack. It may be that from her position she could not detect the missing port rudder. Or it might be that she was waiting for support.

"Shall we not attack?" asked a man.

"That will do little to aid the _Portia_," said another man.

The _Tina_ lying to, several of us stood upon our benches, that we might observe the _Portia_'s fate.

"Can we not yet press to her aid?" asked a man.

"If we did so," said another man, glumly, pointing to the rocking galley of the Voskjard off our bow, "she would take us in the hull like a speared tarsk."

"The _Portia_ is done for," said a man.

"Gone," said another.

Grimly we watched the efficient approach of the Voskjard's ships, one to the port of the _Portia_, the other to her starboard. On the deck of the _Portia_ there seemed no more than fifteen or twenty figures.

"What are they doing?" asked a man.

"I do not know," I said.

Men on the masts of the _Portia_ were unslinging the ropes which held the tops of the long, heavy planked constructions back against the masts. These constructions were mounted on platforms. When freed of the masts they leaned back against the platforms. Other men were busying themselves at the foot of the masts, where they were lengthening and playing out the chains that attached the platforms to the masts. When they had done this other men, with shoulders and levers, and hauling on ropes, moved the platforms, which were on long, solid rollers, with their planked constructions, away from the masts, one to port, the other to starboard. At this point the fellows who had been handling the chains adjusted them to the appropriate lengths. Still by these chains, of course, the platforms with their planked constructions, were held to the ship's masts. I saw the rollers then locked in position.

Pirates crowded to the rails of their ships. I saw grappling irons, on their lines, hurled over the bulwarks of the _Portia_.

But almost at the same time the planked constructions, on their platforms, were pulled downward by ropes. These constructions, some twenty-five feet in length, and some seven feet in width, as the pirates scattered back in their path, crashed downward, their great bent spikes shattering into the decking of the pirate ships, anchoring the ships together, yet holding them some seven or eight feet apart.

At the same time battle horns of Ar sounded from the galley and hatches were thrown open.

The pirates, startled, unable to reach the ship, stood confused along their railings.

"Infantrymen of Ar!" cried a man on the _Tina_.

Out of the opened hatches poured warriors of Ar, grimly helmeted, bearing great, rounded shields and mighty spears, bronze-headed and tapering.

Pirates rushed to the planked road bearing ingress to their ship, but a dozen spears, and then another dozen, hurled by running men devastated resistance, and then, on the run, swords drawn, their shields struck by arrows, buffeting, slashing, driving men into the water, the soldiers of Ar rushed over the bridges linking the ships. Half turned toward the stem of the vessel and half to the stern. The pirates' lines, thin, strung out for boarding, were instantly cut. Vicious and swift, clean, exact, merciless, was the steel of professional warriors. In moments had the decks of both pirate vessels been cleared. And still soldiers emerged from the hold. In all, I had little doubt that they outnumbered the pirates eleven or twelve to one. The spacious hold of the _Portia_ had been crammed with men.

"It was an infantry battle," said a man beside me, in awe.

"But it was fought at sea," said another.

We watched the great planked constructions being pried up from the decks of the pirate ships. We saw flags of Ar's Station being run out upon their stem-castle lines.

"Ar knows what she does best," said a man.

"Yes," said another.

The ship of the Voskjard which had been lying to, preventing us from joining the fray, now backed away from us.

I think all of us, both friend and foe, had from that moment on a new respect for the ships of Ar's Station.

"Let us join our sisters!" called Callimachus.

We then made our way toward the _Portia_ and her prizes.

"It will be dark soon," said a man.

"We can slip away under the cover of darkness," said a man.

"Callimachus will not abandon Callisthenes," I said.

"Where is Callisthenes?" asked a man.

"I do not know," I said.

"Surely we cannot last another day," said a man.

"Not without the support of Callisthenes," said another fellow.

"It would be the third day of fighting," said a man.

"Callisthenes will be here before morning," said a man.

"How do you know?" asked a fellow.

"He must," shrugged the fellow.

"We must rig a new port rudder," I said. "We can obtain materials from the wreckage."

"I will help," said a man.

"I, too," said another.

The thought of the _Tamira_ crossed my mind. I had been within a hundred yards of her today.

"We shall seek permission to put down the longboat," said one of my fellows.

"Do so," I said.

The thought, too, of the _Tuka_, crossed my mind. She had been the lead ship of the Voskjard's fast wedge attack. She now lay damaged, unmanned, stranded on a bar near the chain, not more than a pasang away. It was said that she was a well-known ship of the Voskjard. Too, she was a heavy class galley, with a large hold. "What are you thinking of?" asked a man. "Nothing," I said "Nothing."