busy scene of activity. “She will bring much Lohvian gold.”
“Aye, Dray Prescot. And does gold please you? Is that all you seek?”
I faced her. “Whatever you think, Viridia, I will be loyal to you and your renders. Never fear.”
“You had best be, Dray!”
We sighted no other sail for the next two days, and Viridia was contemplating a return to our island of Careless Repose. We were running under all our canvas and the sea was such that oars would have been impracticable. Despite my disdain for mere wealth I knew I had, personally, amassed a fair-sized sum in these piratical pursuits. I just had to find a ship to take me to Vallia. This life was seducing me.
An excited rush to the rail and up the ratlines confirmed the sail, a triangle of white on the horizon. We took the wind with us as we bore down on her and soon the tall superstructures of a great argenter came into view. She was a fine tall vessel, her three masts clad with billowing canvas, her flags all standing stiff and taut in the breeze. We had the heels of her, if none of our rigging carried away. The hands began to discuss just what prospects of fortune she carried, and if she would strike under varter bombardment or if we would have to board in steel and blood.
Then I saw the flags standing so proudly from her mastheads.
All blue, they were, a bright proud blue. And, in the center of that blue field glared the yellow-orange head of a zhantil, ferocious, roaring, untamed.
I knew that flag.
“She’s from Tomboram!” shouted Arkhebi. As a Lohvian from Walfarg he would know the Pandahemic colors as well as he knew his colors of Walfarg, the flaunting horizontal stripes of red and gold.
“Aye, Arkhebi,” I said. “And not only from Tomboram.”
For I knew, for Pando had told me, with many a boyish twitch of muscular excitement, that he was going to charge a brave zhantil on the blue field of his flag, a zhantil in memory, so he said, of the zhantil-hide tunic I had had made for him, the courageous zhantil, he had said, that reminded him of me.
“Booty, there, mates!” roared a squat-bodied Brokelsh, laughing, pointing, the black bristle hairs on his muscular body all slick with sweat.
I remembered
“Haul that sheet tight!” roared Arkhebi in high excitement. Hands rushed to the sheet and hauled. We were catching all the breeze there was and we were overhauling the argenter as a zorca strides past a vove.
Our four consorts — for one had been sent away with the captured argenter of Menaham — were left far in our wake. They had been dragging their heels all the way. Now it was between us and this proud argenter of Pando’s. I saw his face in my mind’s eye, I saw Tilda’s — but I truly believe it was memory of Captain Alkers that spurred into action what little of conscience I possess. I picked up a long and stout length of timber that fitted snugly into my two spaced fists. I held it in my left hand and walked across to the bulwark. A boarding ax glittered in the hand of a man who stared with a leem-grin over the shining sea toward his prey. I took the ax from him without a word, swung around, and brought the keen glittering edge down across the main course braces and, in a motion so fast the ax blurred into a silvery circle in the hot air, sliced down across the main yard halyards. In a wild flurry and tangle of parting braces and lines the main course billowed up with a gigantic snap, and the main yard smashed down across the deck.
At once everything was confusion.
Viridia screamed orders, Arkhebi ran shouting and gesticulating. I walked quickly forward and repeated my actions on the foremast
“Dray! You madman! Stop that!”
Viridia came leaping across the deck toward me and her four Womoxes followed, shaking out their swords, their ugly faces blank with anticipation of bloodletting. I knew they did not like me, and they were ferocious and powerful in the extreme.
“We cannot take that argenter, Viridia, that is all. The damage aboard here can be cleared up in no time.”
Men surged in confusion, and the ship rolled, falling off as her crossjack swung her around so that any moment she would be in irons. I didn’t care. Just so that I gave Pando’s ship time to make good her escape. Immediately she had seen our plight she had at once worn and gone haring off across our bows, heading for the shelter of the islands which were smudges low on the western horizon. If I had hoped that Viridia harbored any sentiment for me that would halt her vengeful orders I was mistaken.
Valka and the other men of my little group I could see clustered a little to one side and, quite clearly, they were at a loss. They couldn’t understand my actions.
“That ship was from a country friendly to me!” I roared. “No man ravages my friends. Remember that!”
“And no man stands between me and plunder!” shrieked Viridia. She was absolutely furious, her face as red as my breechclout. She jerked her hand at her bodyguard.
“Seize him — do not kill. I will talk to him when you have bound him in iron chains!”
I saw two redheaded men lower their longbows, and so I knew I had a chance. I threw down the ax.
“I will not kill, then, also!” I shouted.
Then the Womoxes charged.
They sought to beat me down, to wound, not to kill. They rushed in with so furious an onslaught that I was beaten back and half to my knees. I used the length of timber to push myself back onto my feet. Then, gripping it as I would my own Krozair long sword I jammed the splintery end into the guts of the nearest Womox. Before he was down, vomiting, I had swung my wooden long sword full at the head of the next. He ducked with the instinctive grace of the fighting-man, but the timber cracked against one of his horns and splintered it redly from his head. He screamed. I was already dodging and weaving away from the blades of his fellows, and with that scream ringing in their ears they were out to kill. Blood-lust dominated them completely.
They thrust now with every intention of spitting me.
I heard Viridia yelling. I ignored her. By rapid and eye-deceiving movements, by a constant flow of action and blows I held the two Womoxes off until I could lay that wooden long sword across the ribs of one and then, as he doubled, short-arm the splinters into his face. He reeled back, spraying blood.
The second had recovered from the loss of a horn and bored in. The last lowered his head as he fought and sought to rip my eyes out with his horns. I skipped back, swung the timber, cracked his skull wide open. The first one, who had been winded, joined his comrade and they rushed me together. Here was the danger. I circled them, weaving the wooden long sword. I do not believe they had experienced a long sword in the grip of a man who knew how to use one before. I dazzled them with a series of passes, ignored their daggers, which took skin from my ribs and slashed my wooden brand down across the face of one of them. He reeled back and I back-struck at the last, smashed in his rib cage and then leaped forward and finished off the sole survivor.
The fight had been hot and brisk, but nothing was settled yet — or so I thought. Viridia was standing with her hand to her lips, her body gross in the swathing robes and armor.
“Dray. .” she whispered.
“I bear you no malice, Viridia. But your bodyguard no longer exist.”
At that moment I heard Valka’s voice, high, screeching.
“Dray! Behind you!”
I whirled. The Brokelsh, an ax high, was swinging at my defenseless back. I sprang aside and as he lunged on with all the vicious power of his swing, I smashed the timber down upon his own back. He went on into the deck. But my wooden long sword, sorely abused, snapped clean across.
“You men!” I roared, brandishing the splintered stump. “We are comrades. There are plenty of fat ponshos sailing the seas. Another will be borne by the wind any time!”
Viridia stood as though turned to stone. Even then I did not fully comprehend the disaster to her personally. I
