between us and the _Olivia_.
'There are lights on other ships!' called an officer. Across the water, here and there, we could see lanterns moving. We heard battle horns.
'Draw alongside the _Olivia_, Callimachus,' I begged. 'Orders must be swiftly issued, and unhesitantly obeyed.'
'Do you plan escape?' asked Callimachus.
'I plan not only escape,' I said, 'but victory.'
We could hear the shouting, as though of a pirate victory, coming from over the water.
My feet slipping on the sand bar I thrust my shoulder against the hull of the _Tuka_, which had been the lead ship in the first major attack against us three days ago. She had been rammed and wounded, and had been abandoned, left aground on the sand bar, near the chain, half in the water, half on the bar. It was a well-known ship of the Voskjard. Near me other men, with their shoulders, and using oars as levers, pried at the hull, its keel sunk in the sand. On either side of the bar, the _Tina_ and the _Tais_, with stout ropes, four inches in width, strained, too, to free the _Tuka_.
The shouting carried over the water. There was a reddish glow to the east, from flames.
'They will soon realize they were tricked,' said a man near me.
'Work, work harder,' I said.
In the confusion and darkness, and in the movement of ships, we had set the _Olivia_ afire, her sails set and her rudders tied in place; she was moving eastward, which would be the likely escape route toward towns such as Port Cos, Tafa and Victoria. Like a majestic torch she would sail into the midst of the enemy. Using this as a diversion the _Tina_ and the _Tais_, with Aemilianus, and the crew and men of the _Olivia_, with captured pennons from prize ships taken earlier from the Voskjard, had permitted other ships, like sharks, to pass them, following the light of the _Olivia_, taking that light for the locale of battle. Soon, of course, if it had not already occurred, it would be discovered that the _Olivia_ was unmanned.
'Work harder!' I said.
We grunted, and pressed our weight against the hull of the stranded _Tuka_. The great ropes strained. Near me I heard the snapping of an oar, it breaking under the force of the four men using it as a lever. Other men, with spear points, scraped at the sand under the keel.
'I fear there is little time,' called Callimachus from the rail of the _Tina_.
'It is hopeless,' said the man near me.
The great weight of the _Tuka_, so dark, so heavy, so obdurate, so seemingly resistant and fixed in place, suddenly, unexpectedly, straining, with a heavy, sliding noise, the keel like the runner of a great sled, leaving a line in the sand, thrust by our forces, moved by the water, slipped backward, six inches.
'Work!' I whispered. 'Push! Work!'
The _Tuka_ slipped back a foot. Then another foot. There was a cheer. 'Be silent!' I cried.
I left my position and, hurrying, ankle deep in sand and water, lowering my head to pass under the ropes between the _Tina_ and the _Tuka_, made my way along her hull until I came to the river, and there entered the water, and swam about her stern quarters.
I joined the men on the other side, on the bar, where the great rent had been torn in her side three days ago by the ram of the _Tais_. The splintered, gaping hole was easily a yard in height and width, the result not only of the ram's penetration but of the tearing and breakage in the strakes attendant upon its withdrawal. The strike had been well above the water line, when the vessel would ride on an even keel. Yet, in the rolling and wash of battle, it had sufficed, at the time, to produce a shippage of water sufficient to produce listing.
Rendered unfit for combat her captain and crew had abandoned her, doubtless with the intention later, at their leisure, to repair and reclaim her. I peered into the rupture in the strakes. The ropes strained again and the _Tuka_ slipped back another yard. She would soon be free of the bar. I considered, as well as I could, from my position outside the hull, what time and materials might be requisite to restore the _Tuka_ to seaworthiness. Such repairs, of course, must be made upon the river, and in flight. I did not wish to leave her as she was, of course, for she was important to my plans. She was, it was said, a well-known ship of the Voskjard.
'There is a ship approaching!' I heard a man cry.
'No,' I cried out, angrily. 'No!'
'It is a derelict,' said another man. 'She is dark. Her rudders are free!'
It must, then, be a ship drifting unmanned, lost, and carried by the current from the concourse of war. Even if it should be a trick, it was but one ship. Given the men of Ar we had, though only two fighting ships, and the _Tuka_, crews enough to man at least five vessels.
The _Tuka_ slipped another yard back, toward the water. With two hands I hoisted myself through the rupture in the hull of the _Tuka_. I drew my sword. The men of the _Tais_, I knew, after her disabling, had briefly boarded her. She had, at that time, been abandoned. I did not doubt but what she was now, too, empty. Yet I did not know that. My sword was drawn. The _Tuka_ is a large ship and I could stand upright within her first hold. I felt her move beneath me, impelled again by the ropes and men, toward the river. It was dark in the hold. As the _Tuka_ slipped in the sand, being drawn backward into the river, water from the hold rushed about my feet, for a moment some six inches in depth. It then drained through the rupture. I could feel the wet wood beneath my bare feet. Beneath the first hold is the lower hold, but this is little more than a damp crawl space, containing the bilge, and sand, which, on Gorean vessels, commonly serves as ballast. I stood back from the rupture. I was uneasy.
I listened. The hold was dark. I seemed to hear nothing. It had been nothing. Surely it had been nothing.
I did not move. I was uneasy.
Suddenly in the darkness there was the rush of a body toward me. I stepped to the side. Steel slashed down. I heard it cut into the wood at my left almost at the same time that I turned and, in the darkness, slashing, cut at it. I knelt beside it. With my left hand I felt it. The neck, struck in the back, had been half severed.
I then rose to my feet. I stood there, in the darkness, and in the silence, my sword ready.
Then I felt soft lips press themselves against my feet. 'Please do not kill me, Master,' begged a woman.
I lowered my sword until the point of it was at the back of her neck.
'Please, do not kill me,' she begged.
She was at my feet, on her belly, in the darkness.
'Cross your wrists,' I told her, 'palms facing one another, and touch your fingers to my ankle.'
She did this, lying on her stomach. With her hands in this position, a girl can exert almost no leverage, and it may be determined, too, that her hands are empty. This is a simple Gorean procedure, not uncommon, for determining that a girl encountered in the darkness is both helpless and unarmed.
I reached downward and, with my left hand, closing it about her small wrists, pulled her wrists up, drawing her into a kneeling position, her hands, in my grip, held over her head. With my blade, I gently felt between her legs. Feeling the steel between her thighs, she shuddered. This pleased me, for it indicated that she was hot. I then, with the blade, felt along the outside of her thighs and belly. 'Yes, Master,' she said. 'I am naked.' I had determined that she wore no cords, or belts, from which a weapon might be suspended. I then touched the side of the blade lightly to her neck. There I felt it move against a steel collar. 'Yes, Master,' she said. 'I am a slave.'
'Who was he, he who attacked me?' I asked.
'Alfred,' she said, 'a man of Alcibron, captain of the _Tuka_.'
'What was he doing here?' I asked.
'He was left here to kill those, not of the pirates, who might seek refuge in the hulk of the _Tuka_,' she said. 'He killed five,' she said.
'And what were you doing here?' I asked.
'I was put here, that I might content and please him,' she said, 'that his duties might be made more enjoyable.'
'Are you beautiful?' I asked.
'Some men have found me not displeasing to their senses,' she said.
'Who is your master?' I asked.
