rowing about five hours, making good speed, when the lookout on the shattered mast let out a yell and pointed off the port bow.
'A ship, Captain! A ship - sinking.'
A ship in distress. With all my trouble it was the last thing I needed. I cupped my hands, and yelled at the lookout.
'What do you make of her, man?'
'I make her a pirate, Captain. There is a skull nailed to her prow. Her mast is gone and she is down by the head. Women aboard her, sir! Women!'
I could hear the muttering all through Pphira at the word. Women! More trouble.
I shot a glance at Ixion. 'What do you make of it? Could it be one of the Queen's punishment ships?'
Zeena!
Ixion took the glass from me and studied the ship. With my naked eye I could see women leaping and shouting aboard her, waving their hands, and bits of colored cloth. Most of them were bare breasted. No sign of a man.
'Those are women right enough,' said Ixion. He licked his lips.
'I know that,' I told him coldly. 'Keep your mind on the matter at hand. What of the ship?'
He nodded slowly. 'She's a pirate, Captain. In bad shape, too, but I don't think she's sinking. Certainly she is not a galless, no crime ship. She's only a unireme and all gallesses are biremes at least, usually triremes. And there is the skull nailed to her prow - none but a pirate would carry that.'
I tugged my beard and wondered aloud. 'Then where are the damned pirates? Not women pirates, certainly?'
Ixion handed me back the glass with a cool look. 'No, Captain. My guess is that the pirates attacked a galless and sank her. They took some of the women aboard their own craft.'
I knew a way to find out. 'Stand by to lie close to her,' I said. 'Battle stations. This could be a trick to lull us with women. She is probably crammed with pirates below decks.'
I was wrong. It turned out that the pirates had taken a galless, one of the Queen's punishment ships. They killed the Captain, one Marius and the only man aboard - did not Queen Pphira mention that name to me? - and they had a lot of fun with the ugly women before they tossed them overboard or slit their throats. The cream of the crop, of the women crew, criminals under Sarmaian law and set to the oars, the pirates took aboard their own ship. All women, as I found out later, were communal property.
I am getting ahead of things. When we found no pirates we came alongside the unireme and took the women off. More of that later. Too much of it, by far. Sheer hell! Zeena was among them.
Ixion was right about the unireme. She could be saved. That really gladdened the old Blade heart. I hated to lose Ixion, but he was the best man I had and he was needed, I told him, in the presence of Pelops, that he was now a Captain.
'Take anything you need and repair that ship,' I ordered. 'Keep her afloat. Take a hundred and fifty men with you. Appoint your own officers - you know them better than I do - and work as fast as you can. I'll lie hove to until we see how it is coming out.'
I saw him watching the sky and knew what he was thinking.
'Pray a little,' I advised him. 'Maybe the storm will hold off long enough.'
To Pelops I said: 'I place you in charge of the women. See if Zeena is among them. Herd them all into my cabin and keep them in it - see to their needs as best you can. No one but you to enter the cabin without my permission.'
Ixion interrupted me, a thing he seldom did. 'There is something, Captain, of which I must speak. It is important. Much so. Neither you nor I want a mutiny.'
I knew it was coming. I said, 'I listen.'
'If I am to have nearly half the men, Captain, and a ship of my own, I will also need some of the women. Surely you see that? Otherwise there will be fighting and mutiny. These men are slaves, as I was, and some have not had a woman in years.'
Pelops nodded at me. 'He is right, sire.'
Of course he was right. I was in Sarma and had to do as the Sarmaians did.
'Find the Princess Zeena,' I told Pelops curtly. 'If she is among them. I care not what you do with the others. You are a teacher, a scholar. Use your math to figure out the ratio - one woman to so many men. Just so you keep them at peace. Now do it.'
(Translator's note - here a large segment of the script is missing or in such condition from sea and time that it is unreadable. Many of the pages are only fragments. It is possible to attempt an interpolation of the missing, or indecipherable, pages, though such an attempt is always presumptuous and carries the risk of misleading. With all this in view, I have still made the effort.
The women were divided among the crews of the two ships. Blade had no alternative and it was the custom in those crude old days. He did find his Princess Zeena, though not as he remembered her, and he found another woman as well. One would indeed give much to know the outcome of all this, of this triangle, if in fact it ever happened. Alas that we cannot know.
We know that there were some thirty women - this indicated by fragments of script not shown here - and that they were happy enough to be with the men on the two ships. One can, even in these somewhat effete days, imagine what it must have been like.
The unireme was saved and made sea-worthy. With Ixion in command it followed Blade as he continued his search for the coast of the Burning Land. Beyond doubt what we today call the Xbec Sands. Whether or not he made it we do not know. It would seem not, by the evidence of these papers themselves which Blade sealed, or at
