'Now the flamethrower's a tricky proposition,' Shend said as she opened a hatch in the square forecastle. 'It's a very effective weapon, but you can't get more'n one or two good shots out of it. Can't carry fuel for more. Now here -' A blunt hand indicated a squat, dully gleaming brass assembly. '- here's the pump, and that's…'
A cry from above brought her head sharply up. Fost saw she almost quivered like a hunting hound on the scent. Her hand dropped to the short axe at her belt. Tolviroth Maritime Guaranty were notorious for avoiding fights that were none of their concern, but that was only because a finely honed instrument of destruction shouldn't be blunted needlessly. But when the time came, the TMG sailors took an unholy joy in battle.
A sailor, dark and sexless against a piling of clouds, sat in a Bucket at the top of the forward mast. The lookout pointed toward the low green shoreline. They crossed delta country where several rivers drained from Lake Lolu into the sea. From the concealed mouth of one of those rivers pirates often sallied forth to attack shipping.
And that was what Fost presumed the three low, black shapes crawling like insects across the rumpled green blanket of sea had in mind.
'An outrage!' The immense Wirixer mage quivered with rage as he twisted a mottled silk handkerchief in his hamhock hands. 'That my personage should be subjected to treacherous assault! Oh, woe, woe!'
'Be silent, you bulbous bag of wind,' sneered Erimenes. 'Be a man! You should look forward with keen anticipation to the virile shedding of blood, as I do.'
'You only do that because you've no blood to shed,' Fost said dourly, trying to fit a conical helmet on his head so that the noseguard didn't scrape his skin. The spirit ignored him.
'Besides, these vagabonds doubtless aren't attacking us to get at you. That's merely a paranoid delusion of grandeur on your part. Likely they're just run of the mill pirates. Murderers, rapists, robbers, that sort of thing.'
'Be silent, you old fool!' Ziore's voice throbbed with exasperation and worry. 'They come to attack Moriana. I know they do!'
Teetering on a rail, resplendent in gilded and shaped breastplate and greaves that would have pleased the Emperor Teom, Ortil Onsulomulo laughed gaily.
'Whatever their motives, their intentions are clear.' He waved a stumpy arm at the approaching ships.
'So are ours,' said Moriana, holding her bow between her knees as she adjusted the buckle of her own helmet borrowed from the ship's armory.
The pirate craft had become distinct shapes with discernible details. Two were low with single banks of oars, which Onsulomulo sneeringly called pentekonters. The third was more ominous, a big bireme with staring eyes painted on the prow.
'Laid down in the Kolnith Shipyards, by her lines,' the captain observed. 'You think Kolnith is backing this?' Fost asked.
'Some City State could be, but I doubt it's Kolnith. Not even the Archduke's fishheaded enough to send his lackeys a-pirating in a ship traceable to him.' Onsulomulo pointed his shortsword at the pirate ships. 'You'll notice their decks are fairly black with men, not to imply they are crewed by my Jorean cousins.' He interrupted the lecture with a short laugh. 'Each is carrying two or perhaps three times its usual crew. They've just put out from land a few hours past and don't need to worry about provisions.' He sighed and shook his large, golden head. 'We are sadly outnumbered, I fear.' 'Woe!' lamented Magister Banshau.
Though according to the half-dwarf captain the bireme would be quicker, the smaller pentekonters coursed ahead, their rowers working frantically to drive them through the incoming rollers. 'It seems they've a basic sense of tactics,' Onsulomulo said dryly. 'How do you mean?' Moriana asked.
'The two little cubs are off to worry our sheepdog while the wolf makes straight for the fold.'
The cry went up, 'There she goes!' from the Wyvern's rail, and Tiger slid under her bows, hitting the crests with loud bangs as she pulled for the attackers. 'They haven't a chance,' said Fost.
The low, black shark-ship shot between the two oared galleys, spitting arrows in both directions. In passing, the ballista mounted amidships thumped and sent a two-yard-long iron dart smashing among the crew tightly packed between the gunwale of the pirate on her starboard. Fost heard the screams.
The bireme had already turned her bow into the west and made to pass to port of her fellows to intercept Wyvern. Onsulomulo shouted for his ship to come about, leading away from the distant green shore. It seemed wasted breath to Fost. They were beating into the wind as they had for ten days and could never hope to out- maneuver the big bireme.
The Tiger swung to port trying to turn about and come to grips with her attackers again. Shend had plotted well. The other pirate galley, inflamed with the lust for loot, kept coming arrow straight for Wyvern's fat flank.
Even at the distance of several hundred yards, Fost heard Shend's voice, 'Star'rd oars, full back! Port oars, full for'ard!' 'A turnabout.' Onsulomulo's eyes gleamed.
It was incredible. The long black hull simply swiveled in the water, as deft as a waterstrider. When her spurred prow pointed the way she had come, Shend roared, 'All for'ard full!' and the ship leaped ahead as if shot from a catapult.
The men packed on the decks of the galley screamed as they saw death bearing down on them. The little galley was broadside to the swell and lost way as the rowers lost rhythm. The slave rowers were trying to tear loose from their chains and flee the path of that deadly spur.
Tiger took her broadside with a rending screech that made Fost's neck hairs rise. For a second, it looked as if the pentekonter would ride out of the blow. Then the deadly iron spur tore free with a harsh squealing of sundered wood and the irresistible pressure of seventy-two strongly pulled and perfectly coordinated oars simply rolled the smaller vessel over. The watchers in the Wyvern clearly heard her keel breaking as the Tiger ran her down.
Erimenes shrieked in bloodlust ecstasy, Moriana shouted and Fost found his throat raw now. Even Banshau had quit blubbering and gazed on intently.
Tiger lunged away from the foundering body of her prey. Still apparently fresh, her rowers pulled her past the surviving pentekonter in a quick shooting pass. Again her arrows and engines worked execution on the thronging pirates while the return missile hail had no visible effect against the Tolvirot's well-shielded complement.
A hundred yards ahead of the pirate, almost in bowshot of the Wyvern, the dromon spun in another breathtaking turnabout and went head to head with the pentekonter. 'Is she going to ram?' Moriana asked.
'Do you jest, Lady? No TMG captain would ram bows-on except as an uttermost final resort. No, Highness, you'll see. Captain Shend has more daggers than one in her fine bodice.'
The pirate oarsmen slacked off, apparently asking the same question Moriana had. Fost heard whips cracking as the rowing master frantically sought to build up headway again. If the Tolvirot really did have a suicidal attack in mind, it wouldn't do to be caught dead in the water.
Tiger veered to port to pass wide of the pirate. He almost felt the sigh of a relief go up from the enemy ship. 'Fecklessness!' Erimenes cried disdainfully. At the last possible instant, the Tiger swung back at her foe.
'Star'rd oars, traill' Shend howled. As one, thirty-six oars snapped back alongside the ship, resting inside the line of her iron sheathing.
The pirate never had a chance. Tiger's prow ran over her oars. Damned wails and screams burst from the pentekonter as her starboard oarsmen were crushed between oars and benches. When at last the horrid grinding was over and the Tiger swung around her foe's high stern, the pirate galley lay motionless in the water.
Then with a thump and a scrape, the bireme came alongside. Fost forgot the Tiger.
Moriana had kept her eye on the approaching bireme and sent some shrewdly aimed arrows in its direction. Now she laid her bow aside and took up sword and shield. She had provided herself with a light leather jerkin for body protection and her Grasslander boots were rolled up to protect her thighs. Fost hoped it was enough. He hoped he had enough, too, with shield and helmet augmenting his tattered mail vest.
Screeching like angry ravens, the pirates swarmed up over the side. The bireme only lacked a foot of Wyvern's freeboard, so there was only Onsulomulo's crew to fend them off. Wyvern held a hundred and twenty men; the bireme easily three times that many. The fight was hopeless from the outset.
'Magic!' Erimenes cried as Moriana and Fost engaged yelling pirates in a skirl of blades. 'Use your magic!'
'Can't!' she cried, taking the thrust of a boarding pike on her shield. 'Too many!'
'A fireball'd cool their ardor,' said the genie, mixing metaphors wildly. 'Shrewdly struck, friend Fost.'
'It'd set the ship ablaze, you dunce!' Fost shouted back, as the partner of the man he'd just killed swung an axe at his head.
