I was pleased with the craft, and, not more than an Ahn after we returned to the island from our concealment in the marsh, Telima poled us away from its shore, setting out course in the wake of the narrow, high-prowed marsh barges of the slavers of Port Kar.
The arrows lay before me, loose in the leather wrapper opened before me on the reeds of the rence craft.
In my hand was the great bow. I had not yet strung it.
The oar-master of the sixth barge was doubtless angry. He had had to stop calling his time.
The barges in line before him, too, had slowed, then stopped, their oars half inboard, waiting.
It is sometimes difficult for even a small rence craft to make its way through the tangles of rushes and sedge in the delta.
A punt, from the flagship, moved ahead. Two slaves stook aft in the small, square-ended, flat-bottomed boat, poling. Two other slaves stood forward with glaves, lighter poles, bladed, with which they cut a path for the following barges. That path must needs be wide enough for the beam of the barges, and the width of the stroke of the oars.
The sixth barge began to drift to leeward, a slow half circle, aimless, like a finger drawing in the water.
The oar-master cried out angrily and turned to the helmsman, he who held the tiller beam.
The helmsman stood at the tiller, not moving. He had removed his helmet in the noon heat of the delta. Insects, undistracted, hovered about his head, moving in his hair.
The oar-master, crying out, leaped up the stairs to the tiller deck, and angrily seized the helmsman bu the shoulders, shaking him, then saw his eyes. He released the man, who fell from the tiller.
The oar-master cried out in fear, summoning warriors who gathered on the tiller deck.
The arrow from the great yellow bow, that of supple Ka-la-na, had passed through the head of the man, losing itself a hundred yards distant, dropping unseen into the marsh.
I do not think the men of Port Kar, at this time, realized the nature of the weapon that had slain their helmsman.
The knew only that he had been alive, and then dead, and that his head now bore two unaccountable wounds, deep, opposed, centerless circles, each mounted at the scarlet apex of a stained triangle.
Uncertain, fearing, they looked about.
The marsh was quiet, They heard only, from somewhere, far off, the piping cry of a marsh gant.
Silently, swiftly, with the stamina and skill of the rence girl, Telima, unerringly taking advantage of every break in the marsh growth, never making a false thrust or motion, brought our small craft soon into the vicinity of the heavy, slowed barges, hampered not only by their weight but by the natural impediments of the marsh. I marveled at her, as she moved the craft, keeping us constantly moving, yet concealed behind high thickets of rush and sedge. At times we were but yards from the barges. I could hear the creak of the oars in the thole ports, hear the calling of the oar-master, the conversation of warriors at their leisure, the moans of bound slaves, soon silenced with the lash and blows.
Telima poled us skillfuly about a large, floating tangle of marsh vine, it shifting with the movements of the marsh water.
We passed the fifth barge, and the fourth and third. I heard the shouts being passed from barge to barge, the confusion.
Soon, shielded by rushes and sedge, we had the first of the narrow, high-prowed barges abeam. This was their flagship. The warriors in the craft, climbing on the rowing benches, were crowed amidships and aft, even on the tiller deck, looking back at the barge line behind them, trying to make out the shouting, the confusion. Some of the slaves, chained at their benches, were trying to stand and see what might be the matter. On the small foredeck of the barge, beneath the high, curved prow, stood the officer and Henrak, both looking aft. The officer, angrily, was shouting the length of the barge to its oar-master, who now stood on the tiller deck, looking back toward the other barges, his hands on the sternrail. On the high, curved prow, to which was bound, naked, the lithe, darkhaired girl, there stood a lookout, he, too, looking backward, shielding his eyes. Below the prow, in the marsh water, the slaves in the punt stopped cutting at the sedge and marsh vine that blocked their way.
I stood in the small craft, shielded by rushes and sedge. My feet were spread; my heels were aligned with the target; my head was sharply turned to my left; I drew the sheaf arrow to its pile, until the three half-feathers of the Vosk gull lay at my jawbone; I took breath and then held it, sighting over the pile; there must be no movement; then I released the string.
The shaft, at the distance, passed completely through his body, flashing beyond him and vanishing among the rushes and sedges in the distance.
The man himself did not cry out but the girl, bound near him, screamed. There was a splash in the water.
The slaves standing in the punt, the two with their poles, the other two with their glaves, cried out in fear. I heard a thrashing in the water on the other side of the barge, the hoarse grunting of a suddenly emerged marsh tharlarion. The man had not cried out. Doubtless he have been dead before he struck the water. The girl bound to the prow, however, startled, hysterical, seeing the tumult of the tharlarion below her, each tearing for a part of the unexpected prize, began to scream uncontrollably. The slaves in the punt, too, striking down with their glaves, shoving away tharlarion, began to cry out. There was much shouting. The officer, bearded and tall, with the two golden slashes on the temples of his helmet, followed by Henrak, still with the scarf bound about his body, ran to the rail. Telima, silently, poled us back further among the rushes, skillfully turning the small craft and moving again toward the last barge. As we silently moved among the growths of the marsh we heard the wild cries of men, and the screaming of the girl bound to the prow, until, by a whi[slave, she was lashed to silence.
'Cut! Cut! Cut!' I heard the officer cry out to the slaves in the punt and, immediately, almost frenzied, they began to hack away at the tangles of marsh vine with their bladed poles.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, unhurried, Telima and I, like a prowling sleen, circled the barges, and, when it pleased us, loosed another of the long shafts of the great bow.
I struck first their helmsman, and soon none would ascend to the tiller deck. Then warriors climbed down to punt, to help the slaves cut marsh vine and sedge, to clear the way, but these warriors, exposed, fell easy prey to the birds of the bow. Then more slaves were put in the punt, and ordered to cut, and cut more.
And when some growth had been cleared and an oar-master would dare to take his seat to call the time for the rowers he, too, like the helmsmen, would taste in his heart the touch of the metal-piled shaft.
And then none would dare take the place of the oar-master.
As darkness fell in the marsh the men of Port Kar lit torches on the sides of the barges.
But by the light of these torches the great bow found the enjoyment of various victories.
Then the torches were extinguisehd and, in the darkness, fearing, the men of Port kar waited.
We had struck from various sides, at various times. And Telima had often raised the piping cry of the marsh gant. The men of Port Kar knew, as I had not, that rencers communicate in the marshes by the means of such signals. The face, delightful to me, taht Telima's skill was such that actuall marsh gants frequently responded to her cries was, I expect, less delightful to those of Port Kar. In the darkness, peering out, not seeing, they had no way of knowing which was a marsh gant and which an enemy. For all they knew, they were encirclesd by rencers, somehow masters of the great bow, That the great bow was used they understood from the time I struck the second helmsman, pinning him to the tiller beam.
Occassionally they would fire back, and the bolts of crossbows would drop into the marshes about us, but harmlessly. Usually they fell far wide of our true positon, for, following each of my fired shafts, Telima would pole us to a new point of vantage, whence I might again, when ready, pick a target and loose yet another of the winged shafts. Sometimes merely the movement of a tharlarion or the flutter of a marsh gant, something completely unrelated to us, would summon a great falling and hissing of bolts into the marsh.
In the darkness, Telima and I finished some rence cake we had brought from the island, and drank some water.
'How may arrows have you left?' she asked.
'Ten,' I said.
'It is not enough,' she said.
'That is true,' I said, 'but now we have the cover of darkness.'
I had cut some marsh vine and had, from this formed a loop.
'What can you do?' she asked.
'Pole me to the fourth barge,' I said.
We had estimated that there had been more than a hundred warriors on the six barges, but not, perhaps, many more. Counting the kills, and other men we had seen, the barges' hulls, there might be some fifty men left, spread over the six barges.
Silently Telima poled our small craft to the fourth barge.
The most of the warriors, we had noted, were concentrated in the first and last barges.
The barges, during the afternoon, had been eased into a closer line, the stem on one lying abeam of the stern of the next, being made fast tehre by lines. This was to prevent given barges from being boarded separately, where the warriors on one could not come to the aid of the other. They had no way of knowing how many rencers might be in the marshes. With this arrangement they had greater mobility of their forces, for men might leap, say, from one foredeck of one barge to the tiller deck of the other. If boarding were attepmpted toward the center of the line, the boarding party could thus be crushed on both flanks by warriors pouring in from adjacent barges. This arrangement, in effect, transformed the formerly purposes, a long, single, narrow, wooden-walled fort.
These defensive conditons dictated that the offense, putatively the male population of one or perhaps two rence communities, say, some seventy or eighty men, would most likely attack at either of the first or the last of the barges, where they would have but one front on which to attack and little, or nothing, to fear from the rear. That the punt might be used to bring men behind attacking rencers was quite improbable; further, had it been used, pressumably it would have encountered rencers in their several rence craft and been threby neutralized or destroyed.
In this situation, then, it was natural, expecting an attack on either the first or the last barge, that the officer, he of the golden slashes on the temples of his helmet, would concentrate his men in the first and last barge.
We had come now to the hull of the fourth barge, and we had come to her as silently as a rence flower might have drifted to her side.
Having no large number of men at my disposal, it seemed best to me to let the men of Port Kar themselves do most of my fighting.
Standing below the hull, quite close, in the shifting rence craft, I made a small clicking noise, a sound that meant nothing but, in the darkness, meaning nothing, would be startling, terrifying in its uncomprehended import. I heard the sudden intake of breath which marked the position of a man. With the noose of marsh vine I dragged him over the sie of the hull, lowering him into the marsh, holding him until I felt the tharlarion take him from me, drawing him away.
Slaves chained at the benches began to cry out with fear.
