Krozair of Kregen

twist and to the devil with the so-called dignity and art of fighting. I chunked a Fristle’s eye out and slashed back at a Rapa, who spun away, screeching as Rapas do screech. The very fury and frenzy of the fight pushed us back and forth across the deck. But we had men, many men, and soon more swarmed up from below as their chains were struck off.

Chapter Five

Vax

The sheer pressure at our backs drove us on. The hideous sounds of mortal combat shocked into the sky. Blood ran greasily across the deck and men coughed or screamed or said nothing as they died. In the press the shortsword proved of value, but I caught a distorted glimpse of Duhrra swinging his longsword and clearing men from his path as a gardener hews weeds. Vax drove on with him. I cursed and beat away a spear-point, thrust short and sharp, and brought the blade back to catch a longsword sweeping down at my head and felt the jar smash along my muscles.

I made a grab with my left hand at the longsword and after one fumble, during which I kicked a fellow in the guts, the longsword was mine. It was a common one with a small hilt; but it would serve. I swapped with a feeling of release.

In the next mur I had leaped after Duhrra and Vax. Together we cut a triple furrow through the Green ranks. Duhrra fought as he always did with a sword, using tremendous sweeps, enormous bashes, and mighty slashings to hew down his opponents. I felt vast relief that he had found and donned a mail shirt, for he left himself dangerously exposed. Vax fought with the trim economy of the trained swordsman. I saw the way he handled his blade and again I wondered if, at his age, he could be a Krozair. We reached the double doors leading from the quarterdeck into the passage under the poop. Vengeance Mortil was a longer vessel than Green Magodont, rowing thirty oars to a bank against the latter’s twenty-one. The poop over our heads was now the scene of fighting. We could hear shrieks and the thumps of feet on the deck. Most of the cabins were empty and we tore straight on toward the captain’s cabin.

He was not there, and I recalled the large man I had felled at the instant of boarding. If he had been the captain, then his crew fought well without him. Satisfied that the cabins here were all empty, we turned to dart out and finish the fight. I stopped stock still.

Duhrra and Vax halted in the doorway.

“Come on, Dak!”

A glass case stood against the bulkhead. A shaft of mingled light struck through the aft windows and illuminated the contents of the case. Crimson blazed. A long blade of steel shafted back gleaming light.

“Trophies,” said Duhrra. “Some poor devil of a Zairian-”

I swung the sword at the glass and smashed the case open.

I took the longsword into my fists. It balanced beautifully.

A Krozair longsword. The genuine article. I saw the etched markings, the Kregish letters in flowing script: KRZI. So this was a longsword of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. The red cloth was a flag. I ripped it down and swathed it about me. I drew it up tightly between my legs and tucked in the end. I picked up the Krozair longsword.

“Now I’m ready to finish this little lot.”

We belted back down the passage. Our backs were secure. We had only to surge forward along the swifter and take or slay all the Green and the ship would be ours.

A dead marine lay at the corridor entrance. I bent and ripped off his belt and buckled it up about the red flag I used, without blasphemy, in all honor, as a loincloth. We went into the fight like leems. I felt rejuvenated. How ridiculous and petty it must seem that a piece of red cloth could wreak so great a change! But the true change was wrought by the Krozair longsword. The blade flamed. The balance was perfect. I felt the power in my fists and I battled forward, bellowed for my men, and together, yelling,

“Zair! Zair!” we catapulted the Greens from the quarterdeck, drove them along the upper gangway. More and more slaves poured up from below, whirling bights of chain. The uproar continued.

I took time to step back as a Grodnim dropped under the blade, and darted a quick and savage look at Pearl. Yes, the fighting there flowed forward, as did the fighting in Vengeance Mortil. A perverse desire grew in me to clear this swifter before Rukker cleared his. I shouted again and roared on, cutting into the last resistance. The Krozair brand sheared through mail where the shortsword would have bounced. We tore into the dying remnants of the resistance and, suddenly, we were on the forecastle with the beakhead lifted, and there were no more adversaries to taste our steel. The men in the swifter at my back began cheering.

I looked across the gap of water at Pearl. Fighting boiled across her forecastle where a knot of men in the green resisted to the end. I saw the Katakis — fewer of them now — battling in the front of the struggle. Rukker was there, a giant figure striking with sword and tail-blade. Springing onto the bulwark, I put my left hand to my mouth — my right was bloodier than my left — and I lifted up my voice and shouted in right jocular fashion.

“Hai! Rukker! What’s holding you up?”

He heard.

The Kataki devil heard. I saw a Grodnim head fly into the air and Rukker stormed onto the starboard bulwark, springing up to glare across at me.

“We have cleared all! There are no skulkers at our backs!”

“And no slaves to pull the oars, either.”

He didn’t like that.

“We have taken this Takroti-forsaken ship! That is what matters.”

“You may have taken her — but have you slaves to man her?”

“I do not wish to discuss that.”

I heard a gurgling laugh and looked back and there was Vax holding his guts and laughing. Well, it was funny, of course; but I had no desire to be stranded without oar-slaves by that Kataki idiot over there. Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done Pearl too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.

“Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.

I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?

Perhaps.

It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.

“Is Pearl seaworthy, after we struck her?”

He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.

In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance — or, rather, men who had been important before they’d been captured — and tried to bash some sense into them. Our own slaves from Green Magodont had by this time some idea of what was needful in this situation. Soon all the men of Zair would come to an understanding. For the moment sheer exuberance and wild release of fettered spirits would make of the three swifters hell-holes.

So I will pass quickly over the ensuing scenes. I took myself off back to Green Magodont and met Rukker storming back. He looked savagely delighted with his morning’s work. He saw my red breechclout and the sword, and he made a face and began to make some kind of snarling remark; but he did not. His tail quivered and shot erect over his head, the tail-blade gleaming, for he had cleaned it off.